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Title: The fear of living
        (La peur de vivre)

Author: Henry Bordeaux

Translator: Ruth Helen Davis

Release date: February 26, 2024 [eBook #73031]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: E.P. Dutton & Company

Credits: Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FEAR OF LIVING ***


                          THE FEAR OF LIVING




                                  THE
                            FEAR OF LIVING
                          (La Peur de Vivre)



                                  BY
                            HENRY BORDEAUX

                      AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION
                                  BY
                           RUTH HELEN DAVIS




                               NEW YORK
                         E·P·DUTTON & COMPANY
                              PUBLISHERS
                            COPYRIGHT, 1913
                       BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY




                                  TO
                        THE HALLOWED MEMORY OF
                            ANOTHER MOTHER
                     WHO KNEW HOW TO SACRIFICE FOR
                             HER CHILDREN
                          THIS TRANSLATION IS
                       AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
                            BY HER DAUGHTER
                           RUTH HELEN DAVIS




CONTENTS

 PAGE

 FOREWORD                               i

 PREFACE                                v

 PART I

 CHAPTER

 I    MARCEL’S HOMECOMING               1

 II   BROTHER AND SISTER               26

 III  THE BATTLE OF FLOWERS            47

 IV   A MORNING AT LA CHÊNAIE          63

 V    ALICE’S SECRET                   85

 VI   MONSIEUR AND MADAME DULAURENS   106

 VII  THE PROPOSAL                    127

 VIII THE CONSPIRATORS                148

 IX   THE FAREWELL                    167

 X    MARCEL’S DEPARTURE              177

 PART II

 I    THIRTEEN AT TABLE               191

 II   THE POLICEMAN’S MESSAGE         219

 III  NIOBE                           240

 IV   THE PAGEANTRY OF DEATH          252

 V    JEAN                            276

 VI   ISABELLE                        296

 VII  PAULE’S SECRET                  315

 VIII MADAME GUIBERT                  335

 IX   THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSES        348

 X    NIOBE’S LAST CHILD              360

 XI   PEACE                           376




                               FOREWORD


M. Henry Bordeaux’s latest novel, “The Fear of Living,” appeared
several months ago, at a season when the “summer novel” was
flourishing. That season belongs to the big purveyors of commercial
literature and is not the time at which to speak of a real writer. I
have, therefore, purposely postponed until to-day my few words about
this book, which both public and press have welcomed warmly, but
without sufficiently marking its true place. It is one of the best
novels that has appeared for a long time. It contrasts, by its vivid
originality, with everything that the storytellers of to-day give us.
It is a new and daring departure.

It is that, primarily, through the philosophy of life which the author
has expressed in it. The “fear of living” is a new and deep-seated
evil among us. We value our peace above everything, we wish to
keep it at all hazards, however dearly we must pay for it. We shun
responsibilities, avoid risks and chances of struggle, flee from
adventure and danger, seek to escape from everything that makes for the
charm and value of life. We no longer have any faith in the future,
because we no longer have faith in ourselves. Writers used for a time
to chronicle this sickly weakness under the name of “dilettantism.”
Then, the fashion having changed, they began to exalt the claims of
energy. But what they understand by that word is nothing but the
keen desire to satisfy our passions and ambitions. In place of lazy
selfishness they have substituted ruthless selfishness. To spare
oneself all kinds of boredom, or to procure oneself the greatest amount
of pleasure, these are the only two conceptions they recommend to us.
But here is a writer who thinks that to live does not mean to bury
oneself in a corner, nor yet to amass money and wear oneself I out with
pleasure. He thinks that a life in which I one has suffered, struggled,
and worked for others, not for oneself, that a life whose years are
counted by emotions, sacrifices, devotions, and renunciations, is a
well-filled life. He says it, he believes it, and, while we read it, he
makes us believe it. It may be absurd, extravagant, and romantic to the
last degree but it is not commonplace.

The characters in the “Fear of Living” are almost all respectable
people. Now it is a dogma in our literature that respectable people are
not interesting. The heroes of a novel may be rogues, even mediocre
and vulgar rogues, turned out “by the dozen”; their adventures may
be reduced to some mean little act, commonplace, ridiculous, and
sensational. It does not matter; they win our sympathy, and we are
ready to find them amusing or touching. But a family that ruins itself
to save the honor of a name, a mother who lets her children go one
by one to do their duty, a young man who prefers the charm of a pure
marriage to the temptations of a sensual love--what interest have such
people for us? And even if we do meet the like in our daily life, in
the name of Heaven let us leave them where they are, and not let them
burden the novel with their sad faces! Such is the prejudice that M.
Henry Bordeaux has not feared to face boldly.

Finally he has tried to write a realistic work, and you cannot find
a scene in it that is one of the commonplace situations in realism.
No infidelity, no child-murder, no atrocious swindling! It has the
air of being written as a wager. We have come, indeed, to the point
of limiting realistic art to the portrayal only of that which is
trivial, low, and worthless. Reality has become with us a synonym for
ugliness. We have calmly laid down these definitions. “Every work is
realistic which paints vile characters and repulsive scenes, even if
these characters be morbid and these scenes be the artificial dreams of
a sickly imagination. Unrealistic is every work in which any account
is taken of the virtues which are the current coin of most lives.” A
writer must be possessed of a rare independence of mind, combined with
no ordinary confidence in himself, to maintain that both nobility of
soul and elevation of character are also realities.

This is the point of view adopted by M. Henry Bordeaux. There is more
true realism in his book than in fifty chosen from among the works of
the most famous “Naturalists.” The figures in it all live. The study
of provincial manners is very finely developed in it. One chapter
might seem a little exaggerated, if one did not feel that its truth
is photographic. It is the one in which the Mayor, officially ordered
to tell Madame Guibert of the death of her son who had been killed by
the enemy, is afraid to compromise himself by crossing the threshold
of people classed as reactionaries and sends a policeman in his place!
Added to it all is a charming sympathy with nature. Both the people and
their surroundings become our familiar friends in this modest home at
Le Maupas, the peaceful setting of so many scenes of sorrow.

M. Henry Bordeaux was already honorably known to us through some
stories written with a delicate touch, and some judicious critical
essays. “The Fear of Living” raises him from his former rank and
classes him as a Novelist.

                                                           RENE DOUMIC.

             (_Journal des Débats_, 30th Sept. 1902).




                                PREFACE


In the month of June, 1902, when I published “The Fear of Living,” I
had no idea how favorably it would be received by the public. Family
tragedies were not the fashion, and I had dared to take a sorely-tried
old woman for my heroine.

Since that time new editions have succeeded one another every year.
I have had to answer many hundreds of letters (often very badly and
briefly) which made me see that I had friends among my readers. At
last I was asked, both in France and abroad, to explain the ideas
which are the foundation of my work. So, although my novel only aims
at increasing the will and the courage to live and not at establishing
any doctrine, I was induced to speak about our various modern attitudes
towards life. After my addresses I was honored by a request to put
them into print. I have gathered together here the notes which helped
me to prepare them. If after four years I feel some pride in recording
the prolonged influence of a work whose art is perfectly natural and
sincere, I must thank for it all those unknown friends who contributed
to the result by their infectious sympathy.


                                   I


The fear of living is a disease which extends its ravages principally
to old civilisations like our own. The symptoms of this moral phthisis
may be outwardly contradictory; for there are two ways of being afraid
to live as there are two kinds of selfishness.

The first, the most frequent to-day and the most cowardly, has already
been denounced by Dante, who in the third Canto of the _Inferno_,
brands it with the red-hot iron of his scorn. Guided by Virgil, the
poet arrives at the gate of the City of Tears. He has not yet entered
the door when he hears, rising up to him from the bottom of the abyss,
groans, shrieks and cries of despair, which resound under a starless
sky. From what lips do these sounds proceed, these sounds which come
from near Hell, but not from Hell itself? Dante in his distress asks
his master for an explanation.

“Master,” I said, “what do I hear, and what is this crowd which seems
so crushed by sorrow?”

And he said: “This is the miserable fate of the sad souls of all those
who have lived without blame and without praise. They are mingled
with that dread chorus of angels who were neither faithful to God,
nor rebellious, but who existed for themselves only. They have been
banished from Heaven, because they spoiled its beauty, and the depths
of Hell would not receive them because the damned would gain some glory
by their presence.”

And I said: “Master, what is the torment that is crushing them and
makes them weep so bitterly?”

He answered me: “I will tell you briefly. They have no hope of dying,
and their dark life is so vile that they are envious of every other
fate. The world has no memory of them, and mercy and justice despise
them. Do not speak of them; look and pass on....”

If the “_Inferno_” describes worse torments, it contains no
words more scathing in their disdain than these which describe “those
inert ones who are pleasing neither to God nor to his enemies.” The
misers who carry burdens, the evil-tempered who struggle in a bog, the
voluptuous dragged into an endless whirl-wind, the rogues plunged into
a lake of boiling pitch, have deserved their punishment by their acts,
and have asserted themselves in evil-doing. The others have asserted
themselves neither in evil nor in good. Neither virtuous nor vicious,
we do not know what they were. Dull, flabby, and soft, they have not
left behind the memory of any personality. They scarcely lived; they
were afraid to live.

For the fear of living means precisely that,--to deserve neither blame
nor praise. It is the constant all-prevailing desire for peace. It
is the flight from responsibilities, struggles, risks, and efforts.
It is the careful avoidance of danger, fatigue, exaltation, passion,
enthusiasm, sacrifice, every violent action, everything that disturbs
and upsets. It is the refusal of life’s claims upon our hearts, our
sweat, and our blood. In short, it is the pretence of living, while
limiting life, while setting bounds to our destinies. It is that
passive selfishness which would rather retrench its appetite than seek
the food which it requires; the selfishness which is meanly content
with a colorless, dull life, provided it is sure of meeting with no
shocks, no difficulties, no obstacles, like the traveler who will only
journey along plains and on rubber tires.

Must we quote examples? It is the fear of living which inspires a
young man in the choice of a profession, which shows him the special
advantages of an official career providing him, in return for work that
is moderate in amount and does not take up much time, with a fixed
salary and a pension; that modest dream which inspired Goncourt to make
this epigram--“France is a country where one sows functionaries and
reaps taxes.” Is it not this fear much more often than a keen sense of
justice, that drives the weak and envious to that Socialism which would
result in the establishment of an all-round equality of mediocrity?

It is certainly this fear which, when it does not lead to a
comfortable, selfish, practical, bachelor’s life, prompts those
marriages wherein one consults one’s lawyer rather than one’s heart,
and thinks of income rather than of the advantages of beauty, physical
and moral health, education, courage, ability and taste. Certain
theories of the day, which on their critical side are not without
justification, pretend to purify the sources of marriage by suppressing
the consent of parents which is often too apt to overlook personal
characteristics through consideration of the advantages to be gained,
and by multiplying the facilities for union with the facilities for
divorce; in a word, by associating marriage with those other unions
which have no regard for the social order, into which they introduce
anarchy. But marriage is the gateway of the family, the foundation of
the home; its aim is to complete two lives by joining the one to the
other and to bring other beings into the world. It cannot rely solely
on that love which is commonly represented with bandaged eyes; for it
is not purely an individual act, in that it both continues a tradition
and perpetuates a race. Is it the importance of this race and this
tradition which has to be considered, or is it only a petty ideal of
practical happiness, comfortable and ignoble? Can man not feel himself
fit to guide, guard, and direct the destinies of his own? Can woman
not deprive herself of luxuries that are useless, or at least merely
accessory? Would life, stripped of so many accessories and so many
useless things, simplified but not diminished, become unacceptable?
Must the place of moral force be taken by the heritage handed down by
one’s father?

After marriage, we find again the fear of living in the dread of having
children and the restraint of parenthood. To create life has become too
heavy a responsibility, too irksome a burden, above all a nuisance;
and it is thus that France has been called the land of only sons. By
suppressing the choice of making a will the Civil Code has struck a
heavy blow at the coherent unity of the family, grouped round its
head and supported by its land. But we have lately been told by _La
Réforme Sociale_ of the method employed by the Normandy peasants,
after having already been employed by so many of the bourgeoisie for
the preservation of the inheritance. For the heir nominated by the
father, or according to custom, is substituted the only son. In the
mountains of Savoy the traveller often notices on the slopes bordering
the roads, and sometimes even in the hollows of hidden valleys,
shrines dedicated to Our Lady of Deliverance. Young, wives in the
hope of having children used to make pilgrimages to these shrines.
To-day young wives thank God for a barrenness which in former days
was a reproach. A child is such a rarity that it is watched over and
spoilt. Thus the fear of living has its effect even on those destinies
which depend, so far as their beginnings are concerned, upon us only.
So many fathers and mothers cannot consent to be separated from their
children, and turn them aside from careers that are wider but more
adventurous, from marriages which would take them far away but which
would be morally advantageous to them; they weaken them, enervate or
wear out their courage instead of arousing it, and in their sentimental
selfishness impose on them a servitude which lowers their characters.

Of this fear of living, however, examples are to be found in our public
life, in our social life, in the art which expresses the feeling of our
times, in our institutions, even in matters of our health.

In public life, why is abstention from the franchise attributed to
the moderate party, to those whom one calls or who call themselves
“respectable” people?--as if there were such a thing as negative
respectability! Quite recently men boasted in certain circles that
they never voted; and, if they do not boast of this any more, they
make their voting subordinate to hunting and entertainments, and it is
fashionable to affect the greatest contempt for politics. In the life
of a modern nation, rightly or wrongly, everything reduces itself to
politics or is influenced by politics. This is a fact against which it
is useless to protest. “The really useful work,” said Mr. Roosevelt,
President of the United States, “is not accomplished by the critic who
keeps out of the battle but by the man of action who bravely takes part
in the struggle, without fear at the sight of blood or sweat.” We have
so many of these critics who keep out of the battle and read the papers
every morning in order to be able to discuss the affairs of the nation
in a superior tone, who vainly regret the past, sigh over the future,
and discourage those who undertake to show them the way.

The mere fact of living in society, of enjoying social rank, creates
social duties. No one has the right to arrange his life separately, for
no one person can dispense with the rest. To pay one’s taxes, grumbling
all the time, is not enough. The wealth which represents accumulated
work in the past does not exempt one from work. Since it furnishes the
means of better and greater production, it should result, not in a
class of people who enjoy it, but in a class of leaders; and a leader
is one who understands how to take on himself the greatest share of
the work and responsibility. But, to judge from observation, it would
seem that wealth is only a factor in selfishness, an occasion for petty
and ridiculous pleasures--as though wealth were more difficult to bear
than poverty. The latter constantly furnishes examples of solidarity
and devotion. In these strikes, too often gotten up by the leaders for
their own purpose, do we not see the workmen suffering from hunger and
poverty for the sake of one another, or subscribing a tithe of their
modest wages to help their comrades in other towns and other trades? Do
we not find Victor Hugo’s _Pauvres Gens_ to the very life in those
paragraphs which tell, in two or three lines, how at the death of some
poor wretch with a family the neighbours have fought for possession
of the orphaned children, even before the charitable organisations or
private benevolence have had time to intervene?

There is no doubt that poverty is very painful to look upon. It
disturbs our peace, our comfort, our natural forgetfulness of all
that does not minister to our pleasures. People even consent to
be generous--through the medium of someone else--to escape the
inconvenience of sorrowful spectacles. We have our nerves, our
refinement, our horror of the importunate, and we adroitly evade the
demands of charity, although we can never deny the power of its appeal.
“I do not want to see either illness or death,” says Hedda Gabler,
Ibsen’s most morbid heroine, to her husband. “Spare me the sight of
everything that is ugly.” And this æsthetic person, at the moment when
she kills herself in disgust after having lived for herself alone, sees
that ridicule and low ideals have infected like a curse everything she
touched.

In the realm of art, the fear of living is mingled with the fear of
feeling. It moves those dilettantes who wish neither to make a choice
nor to give themselves up, who only yield themselves temporarily to
all their intellectual or plastic impulses without ever surrendering
to enthusiasm, and who consider themselves superior because they float
on the top of things; for, deep as the subject be, love alone can
penetrate beneath the surface. This fear also actuates those artists
who, in the name of pure art, reject from their work all humanity and
poetry; who substitute for those familiar conflicts of the soul, which
are the life-food of ancient tragedy, the pretty but unsubstantial
painting of pleasure, and are content to elaborate their style like the
sides of a costly but empty vase--without the slightest suspicion that
in art, as in everything else, there is a definite order of merit, and
that they are seated on the lowest step.

It is everywhere, this fear of living; it provides inspiration for
the effeminate novelists and the incapable dramatists, who can create
none but inconsistent characters, incapable of analysis. In the trivial
adventures of their puppets they show us that everything is a matter
of arrangement and nothing is worth being taken seriously, instead of
inviting us to take our lives in our own hands. The great human cries,
in art, are cries of strength and courage, and are often forced into
utterance by unhappiness; suggesting that perhaps the happy spirit
lacks the depth that is to be found in the abysses of life.

Lastly, timidity, reserve, and a prudence that is sometimes legitimate
but often excessive, find their expression even in our public
institutions, which multiply our guardians, put us all into leading
strings, and relegate to the State the duty of looking after and
helping us on all occasions. They have even undertaken to replace
the old-fashioned Providence--and by what? By insurance companies!
We insure ourselves against accidents, against risks, against
death--indeed a far-sighted wisdom! Why should we not be insured also
against fear?

Fear stamps the faces of the young men of the new generation, who
appear to be anxious only about their health, and who, unable to digest
except by the help of mineral waters and camomile, open their mouths
only to criticise and to disparage; who praise nothing, like nothing,
want nothing, as if they had fishes’ blood in their veins. Why all this
trouble to preserve and keep themselves, for all the good that they get
out of or contribute to life?

Could youth set less value than it does upon life? The recent suicide
of a schoolboy at Lyons added a fresh paragraph--the most terrible
of all--to the indictment of the _Déracinés_, the Uprooted
ones, against an education which ignores the facts of family, race,
locality, and country. Before going to his death the poor lad wrote on
the blackboard, “I am young, I am pure, and I am going to die.” The
teaching of his professor of philosophy had disgusted him with life.

What had they taught him? The beauty of pure reason, of science, of
humanitarianism. Instead of being told to take his proper place in the
order of things, he was called upon to destroy all in order to rebuild
all again, to make a clean slate of the past, of tradition, of the
destiny which had caused him to be born in a particular country at a
particular date, in order to create a new personality for himself, a
new universe, a new God. Besides preparing for his material future
they expected of him, as of all Frenchmen, that he should create for
himself a metaphysics, a politics, and a morality. He succumbed to
all these burdens. Life did not appear to him in a shape with exact
outlines, with beautiful lights and dark shadows, with the concomitants
of effort, joy, and sorrow, with a splendour of created things, with
privileges of working, of feeling behind one a past that one may carry
forward, and of being able to count even on the future. It was for him
a dense fog, which his reason vainly tried to pierce, in which he heard
the call neither of God, of race, nor of country. He did not see his
own importance, which was not merely individual but collective, he did
not understand that everyone’s duty is to recognise one’s own place,
that everyone’s strength and profit are to be sought in the realities
of existence on which he depends and which in their turn depend on him.
And so he learned a new fear of living.

These modern young men have sisters. I will not venture to describe
them. A Persian proverb warns us “not to strike a woman, even with a
flower.” But the poets, who have every license, even against love, have
taken on themselves the task of painting the portrait. Who does not
recall the “Lines to a Dead Woman”?

    “Yes, good she was--if ’twere enough
    That as she passed her hand would give,
    Without God seeing, saying aught,
    If gold without kind words be alms.

    “She thought--if a melodious voice,
    A soft and sweet, but empty sound,
    Like to the murmur of a stream,
    Be token of the thought behind.

    “She prayed--if beauty of two eyes,
    Which sometimes on the earth were fixed,
    Sometimes uplifted to the sky,
    Be worthy of the name of prayer.

    “She died, and yet she never lived;
    She only made pretence at life.
    The book fell idly from her hands,
    In which not one word had she read.”

“She only made a pretence at life.” How many die to-day who have never
lived at all!

Even our health has suffered from the reaction of our moral weakness.
Nervous illnesses, which for several years have been making such
alarming progress, are nothing else than the result of disabled wills,
of weakened personalities. Doctor Grasset, Professor in the Faculty of
Medicine at Montpellier, who has gained universal renown by his special
study of these diseases, clearly states the necessity of recourse to
a moral treatment which consists in building up the personality and
strengthening the will. “We must,” he says, “give a patient the desire
and the ambition to cure himself, and with that purpose we must show
him the object that life still holds for him, the mission that he still
has to fulfil in this world.”

“A nervous subject, who does not understand life, who will not admit
that life is worth the trouble of living, who goes to sleep at night
without wishing to think of the next day, with no satisfaction beyond
that of having one day less to live ... this nervous subject will never
be cured.

“The doctor must awaken and develop in his patient the ideas of duty,
of sacrifice, of sociability. All these great thoughts must replace the
morbid ones.

“The patient must be prevented from limiting himself to the fruitless
brooding over a past which cannot be altered. Whatever are the
injustices, apparent or real, of different lots, every man has before
him a part to play, be it small or be it distinguished, in the
interests of his fellow men and of humanity in general.

“We must, in other words, take the patient out of himself and turn
him more and more towards altruism, by showing him that the cure lies
there, and only there.

“A healthy man is an altruistic animal. Egotism and self-centredness
are allied to disease; they are the causes and symptoms of disease. As
long as one remains an egoist, one is not and cannot be cured.”

In order to appreciate the importance of such words, let us remember
that they do not emanate from a theorist, but from an observer of
innumerable facts. Such, then, is the physical danger of the fear of
living, such is the psychic treatment of it.


                                  II


There is yet another form of the fear of living. Here, it is true,
there is no shrinking from effort, from trouble, or from battle.
Next to passive selfishness it is necessary to drag into the light,
as Apollo dragged Marsyas, that active egotism which is capable of
displaying the utmost vigor, but only to satisfy an individual aim,
that of one’s own pleasure. This puts to a wrong use our best weapon,
which is energy. It claims to subordinate life to its will, to accept
it only for what it is actually worth, and therefore it fears life.

Doubtless this curious form of cowardice has more to recommend it than
the other, and attracts by a pretence of merit as the Sirens attracted
by a pretence of love. Its motto might be the celebrated definition of
Mérimée: “Life is a green table, which amuses us only when the stakes
are high.” Its defiance of life sometimes becomes a defiance of death,
and we cannot quite restrain ourselves from admiration when we see Don
Juan--the most brilliant incarnation of this bold selfishness--the
breaker of all oaths, the miserable corruptor of all the virtues, alone
in the banqueting hall (where, though lights and flowers still suggest
triumphant joy, the terrified guests have all fled), to see him rise
and go forth, torch in hand and sarcasm on his lips, to meet the statue
of the Commander, whose embrace is to crush him.

This energy which demands violent pleasure is the energy of the bandit.
It is quite possible to find praise for it. I find it, to the life,
in one of those strange, suffocating novels wherein Madame Grazia
Deledda truthfully depicts the manners of Sardinia. An old widow in
the mountains, to dazzle the young Oli, sings the praises of her dead
husband, the best and most devoted of men. “What did he do?” asks Oli.
“Ah, he was a brigand.” And when the young girl is surprised at this
answer, the widow tells that her husband became a brigand to show his
bravery and to occupy the time which is so badly spent when one is
idle. Was it not better than frequenting the inn? And in a lyrical
strain she celebrates this life of enterprise. “They were,” she says,
“brave and skilful, ready for everything, especially for death. You
think, perhaps, that all these robbers are bad men? You are wrong, dear
sister. They are the men who want to prove their bravery--nothing else.
My husband used to say, ‘Once men went to the wars, but to-day there
are no more wars and men still feel the need of fighting.’ That is why
they go in for brigandage, plunder, and violent deeds, not to do harm,
but to show their strength and courage in some way.”[1]

This is the case in business, in politics, in society, to some extent
everywhere, with men, and even women, who in one way or another display
their strength and courage. They are not necessarily bandits, but they
all desire to get only joys, or at least violent sensations, out of
life, and aim at throwing it away afterwards like a squeezed orange.
These are the mad individualists who will not observe any measure in
enjoyment, and see in the world only a personal inheritance to be
wasted by them. I know them well, through having often myself looked in
their direction with the fever of desire. Never has the possibility of
a future life been so insolently rejected, and never have we, as some
of us now do, exposed ourselves with such foolhardiness to all dangers
of destruction, as though it were necessary to make a blaze of this,
our only life, in order to discover in it some divine fire. We plunge
it in the whirl-wind of death to increase its intensity for a few
precarious moments.

Romanticism, by proclaiming the right to passion, the right to
happiness, the right to freedom, encouraged the development of
individual force. A new romanticism extols it to-day, and it is chiefly
women who preach the gospel. Their invasion of contemporary literature
is only one symptom of a more general feminism. Less apt than man to
grasp the complexity of social and moral life, the new woman exhausts
all her demands in one cry and with a single leap lands at the road’s
end to which she is led by confidence in her own powers and by her
narrow view of the universe which centres wholly in self. At last
individualism has found its philosopher in a poet, Nietzsche,--much
misunderstood, by the way,--who grants to the Superman all rights. And
why should one not believe in a Superman, especially if one is a modern
woman?

But is it not rather curious to call that doctrine the fear of living
which glorifies life and doubles its intensity?

I am reminded of a little story which used to be told to me when I was
a child. It is the story of a ball of string that a fairy--good or
bad--gave to a little boy with these mysterious words:

“This ball represents the length of your life. Each moment will shorten
it. I have not the power to increase the time nor even to suspend
it, but I have the power of shortening it, and that I give to you.
Whenever in your life you come upon hours that are useless, sorrowful,
or unpleasant, and wish to shorten them, pull the string and the hours
will pass. Farewell and be wise.”

The little boy paid no heed to this prudent advice. He took the ball
laughingly, and as he was merry he thought he would let the string
shorten itself. Then he began to have wishes. At school he wished
for holidays. He was ambitious; he desired to realise his ambitions.
And to obtain the objects which he coveted, he pulled and pulled at
the string. When he had finished the term of his life he perceived
with consternation that he had scarcely lived a few days. Just so our
desires would consume our days, if our days depended on our desires.

Thus our individualists whose energy seems to i be of a worthy sort
have, on the contrary, a fear of living. They are afraid to live, since
they do not wish to live their lives entirely and since, perverted by
the abuse of violent sensations, they no longer understand, they fear
ordinary life, which seems wearisome and dull to them.

Now this ordinary life plays an important part in the succession of
our days. It is almost all the ball of string. To limit life to youth
is not to understand it, is indeed to despise it. For it is all worth
living, if only we know how to fill it.

Beyond the appetite for those passions which, through their very
violence, their risks, their mischances, have a certain grandeur,
I see among the symptoms of disease the search for, the need of,
distraction. One meets to-day, especially in Paris among the wealthier
classes--for poverty suppresses this ardor--men and women who seem to
flee from themselves, so agitated are they. They confuse the meaning
of agitation and action. It is a terrible confusion, which arose in
society principally since the Eighteenth Century. That century began
to disturb the springs of our inward life. The Duchess of Maine, as
early as that, said that she had contracted “the love of a crowd.” We
pass our time outside our homes, or we come back with a crowd, so as
to avoid solitude for a single instant. We make out a programme every
morning, so harassing that we should refuse to go through it if we
were forced to do so. We must amuse ourselves, distract ourselves,
forget ourselves. To withdraw within ourselves is to be bored when
we have neither love nor faith nor definite aim. And we think we are
living a great deal; which is the reason why so many Parisians, men and
women, to whom a variety of spectacles and a feast of art are supposed
to bring great intellectual development, have seen so much and have
retained so little. Life for them is like a cinematograph picture which
dazzles the eye and goes back into darkness. They have never worked for
their impressions, and these are the only impressions which count.

Now that is not living, to be always “out”--like Madame Benoîton--“out”
even to oneself, especially to oneself; any more than it is
travelling, when one rushes over the high roads at full speed in a
motor without once stopping. Life is not perpetual distraction, and
here we have another form of the fear of living.


                                  III


The first form confused cowardly passivity, reserve, and parsimony with
courageous resignation, while this militant egotism confuses strength
with its display. The only true energy is that which is ordered and
disciplined.

We are born in a state of dependence. We depend on all kinds
of particular conditions; conditions of country, race, family,
environment, education, health, brains, fortune; for there are no men
that are free, and herein lies our great equality. Besides, in the
course of our life, we shall depend on circumstances which we shall be
able neither to foresee nor to avoid. We must resolutely accept this
dependence.

It is the chief of all heroisms. Not the heroism with the plumes and
the flourish of trumpets, which individualism is willing to extol
so as to raise the song of life to the major key; but an obscure
heroism--the most difficult, for publicity is a great comfort--which
must be sustained and manifested in the smallest things. That haughty
individual, capable of heroic acts, shows himself, on coming down from
his pedestal, perfectly unbearable and cowardly in the life which
(let us not forget) is our daily life; while of another, apparently
insignificant, we learn one day, often too late, that he has always
been doing wonders. No life is devoid of opportunities to display
merit; the thing is to seize these opportunities.

But if we are, in one part of our life, dependent, another part of our
life, on the contrary, depends on us. There, our will and our energy
can and must come into play. It is their task to increase in wealth,
importance, and value the inheritance of our life, as cultivation
increases the natural fruitfulness of the land.

Every life demands effort, no one is exempt from sorrow, very few
are unacquainted with failure. Effort, sorrow, failure, are so many
obstacles which bring out the extent of our merit. “In this life”--to
quote President Roosevelt again--“we arrive at nothing without an
effort. A healthy State can exist only if the men and women who compose
it lead healthy, strong, clean lives; if the children be brought up
in the right way, if they try to overcome difficulties, not to avoid
them, if they do not seek comfort but know how to snatch triumph from
pain and risk. Man must be happy to do man’s work, to dare and be
adventurous and work to keep himself and those who depend on him. The
wife must be the housekeeper, a companion to the founder of the home,
a wise mother, who is not afraid of having many healthy children. In
one of his powerful and melancholy books Daudet speaks of the ‘fear of
maternity--the terror which haunts the young wife of the present day.’
When such words can be truly said about a nation, that nation is rotten
to the core. When men fear work, or rightful war, when women fear
maternity, they are trembling on the brink of damnation, and it would
be a good thing if they vanished from the earth, where they are the
just objects of scorn to all men and women who themselves are brave and
high-souled.”[2]

This is the condemnation of idle wealth and inertia. And if the head
of the young American nation thinks it necessary to utter such words
to stir up the wills of so vigorous a people, how much the more bitter
must their application be to our weary France? Over there they scarcely
strike at any but the frantic egoists, whose energies it is more easy
to direct into the right channels than it is to galvanise into action
our fear and cowardice.

President Roosevelt has always made the distinction between material
treasures and those moral treasures which give nations and individuals
their vitality. In a letter to our Mistral, who had sent him a copy
of “Mireille,” he explained this again with his usual clearness.
“Industries and railways,” he wrote, “have their use up to a certain
point, but courage and power of endurance, the love of our wives and
children, the love of home and country, the love of the betrothed for
one another, the love and imitation of heroism and sublime endeavors,
the simple every-day virtues and the heroic ones,--these are the
greatest virtues and if they are lacking, no accumulated wealth, no
amount of ‘industrialism,’ however noisy and impressive, no feverish
activity, under whatever form it may be shown, will be profitable
either to the individual or to the nation. I am not despising the value
of these things of the ‘body of the nation’; I merely desire that they
should not make us forget that as well as a body there is also a soul.”


                                  IV


If endeavor should stimulate us, pain ought not to crush us. But do we
not resist it less well nowadays? Physical pain, more especially, has
become unbearable to us. We need sedatives for the smallest ailments,
and we are sure that our candor will be applauded if we declare that
violent toothache is more painful than any moral pain.

Moral pain is the indispensable complement of human life. Before
suffering comes, life does not appear in its true colors, and the weak
are not always distinguishable from the strong.

“The woods, cut down, more fair and green shall grow,” said old
Ronsard. After all, life has its revenges. Even if it had not, we
still ought not to be discouraged. Many faces turn away from failure
and resent defeat, even in the case of others. That again is fear. One
day a professor of literature, not devoid of irony, having finished
a course of lectures on the “Iliad” to a class of young girls, asked
his pupils which hero they preferred, Achilles or Hector. Achilles
had an overwhelming majority. He was the conqueror. But Homer, more
clear-sighted in his psychology, gave the conquered hero the nobler and
more generous character, for he knew the share that the gods have in
the success or failure of mankind. Our finest French epic, the “Chanson
de Roland,” exalts courage under defeat.

Energy fits us to bear failure, pain, and effort. This fine quality
needs discipline. Its character depends on the use that is made of it.
To cultivate it for itself would be to imitate those people who make
sport the aim of their existence. Sport maintains or increases our
strength and our health, of which we have need in order to realise our
life; but to take them for the actual realisation of life would only
be grotesque. Nature develops itself blindly and lavishly. Everything
pertaining to the human sphere is subject to order. And, just as no
work of art can be produced without submission to the laws of harmony,
so there is no fine life without the acceptance of an order conditioned
by our dependence and our limitations. But to regulate our energy is
not to diminish it. On the contrary, it is to possess and manage it as
a horseman his well-trained horse. “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth
violence,” says the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, “and the violent
take it by force.” Life itself suffers violence. The lukewarm and
moderate natures have never created anything; the creative are the
passionate ones who have tamed their passions.

In order to live all our life, it is important to accept it in the
past, the present, and the future as well. In the past, this means to
recognise a tradition. Neither nations nor individuals appear suddenly
in the light of day. We must therefore recognise the ties which bind
us to the country where we were born, to the race from which we have
sprung. Thus we shall extend ourselves backwards and take to ourselves
whatever there is, in the past, that still has life.

But to get inspiration from the past does not mean to identify oneself
with it. “The life which tries to expand itself,” says Monseigneur
Spalding, “eliminates dead things from it, and if you are a vivifying
force, do not adopt the profession of grave-digger.” Nothing begins
over again and everything evolves. Everything evolves slowly and
under the impulse of what has gone before. Every age has its own
new needs, which must be understood. Ours makes great demands. More
complex and more troublous, it requires clearer sight, plainer sense
of responsibility, and more enlightened intelligence. The segregation
of poverty helps to conceal its miseries; industrial and mechanical
developments make work less personal, and specialisation destroys part
of the joy in work. New conditions of life have sprung up, which need a
new spirit of enterprise.

The future, revealed in the faces of our children, reminds us that our
goal lies beyond us, and that even in the nightfall of our life we must
prepare a shelter for our descendants. We do not build with the same
materials if the house is to last but a few years as we do if it is to
last for centuries.


                                   V


We must not think that, in developing in ourselves the love of life--of
the whole of life--we create a greater fear of death. Our life is not
in proportion to its length. Very short lives often give out more
perfume than long barren existences. The important thing is not to grow
old, but to fill up all one’s days until the last, knowing well that
the last will come and give to our life its finished form. For the
acceptance of the whole of life includes the acceptance of death.

_Figaro_ opened recently a rather curious discussion among the
doctors, which must interest all of us, since it is true that we all
must die. It inquired of a certain number of “princes of science,”
members of the Academy of Medicine, professors of faculties, eminent
surgeons and practitioners, all men with degrees and honors, concerning
the following case. A doctor is attending a patient, and finds that the
illness is incurable, that the end is only a question of months, of
days, or of hours. Must he say so? Must he tell the patient himself, or
only the family, and in the latter case, which member of it?

The answers were almost all the same. They might have borrowed the
epigram from Pascal: “Men, not being able to cure death, poverty, or
ignorance, imagine they can make themselves happy, by not thinking
about them; that is the only consolation they have been able to
discover for so many ills.” Our doctors, unable to do away with death,
think they can do away with the thought of it. They chloroform us
morally, in preparation for the operation of the Fates.

There are some very timorous writers who will not even allow the
subject to be discussed. They think it irritates their readers and
so push it aside with all their strength. Or else they take shelter
behind their conscience, which is presumably the only judge of their
actions. But the greater part of them have an opinion. They invoke
humanity as if it were some new god, who requires lies and demands
cowardice. “Nothing must be told the patient which is not cheering,”
one of them informs us. “It is charitable to leave a light of hope till
the very end,” says a second. A third expounds this maxim: “It is no
one’s duty or right to tell a patient that he is lost.” And M. Vaulair,
a professor of the University of Liège, declares that when the science
of medicine is powerless, its most pressing duty is to give the unhappy
one who believes in it the help of a lie. All except one are agreed in
maintaining that the patient, the principal person interested, has no
right to hear the truth.

Must this truth be told to the family circle? Yes, up to a certain
point. One must try to avoid giving pain to a wife, to children, to
a father or a mother, who might be overwhelmed by the blow. Tact,
prudence, reserve, moderation, hints, counsels, allusions, such are the
varied stock-in-trade of the doctor in a case of this kind. He chooses
a distant relative, strong and courageous, to whom he gently breaks the
news, so as to make sure that he will not succumb to the shock. This
relative can do what he likes about the matter. There is nothing more
to be said; the family has been warned. A brave man knows the secret,
it will be well kept. The doctor is the sole judge in the choice of
this confidant. The important thing is that it must not be a near
relative, who might be frightened. These doctors are tactful people.
We believed them armed against grief, impassive, indifferent, brutal.
How mistaken we were about them! What apologies we owe them! They are
as gentle as little girls, as compassionate as sisters of mercy. They
could not inflict pain without suffering themselves. And when the
patient is dying they look for the most distant relative, the hardest
and toughest, to confide to him stealthily that a mortal man is about
to die.

Thus life will come to a painless end. Is not everything preferable to
the terror inspired by death? Everything? Not quite. Certain doctors
think that we may well allow a poor old man to die who is of no use to
anyone, without telling him; but when they think of the head of a great
business or of one of those capitalists who manage some huge concern,
they are quite out of countenance. You see, the case becomes serious.
What is to happen to all this vast business? What is to be the future
of all this capital? Must we not “assure the interests of the heirs”?
Yes, the importance of such material things justifies torturing the
dying man. In his last moment he must pay for the importance he has
enjoyed on earth. They will make him understand that he alone has no
right to die quietly and is doomed to be worried till he has made his
will, divided his goods, settled the fate of his business. Afterwards
they may give him some hope, on condition that he does not use it to
destroy what he has just done.

But who is really deceived? What is this comedy that they pretend to
play round deathbeds? Do we not know, that some day we must die? Does
not this certainty of death impart to life a peculiar significance? Can
this be destroyed by not thinking about it? “Really,” M. Brunetière
wrote recently, dealing with the subject of the “Falsehood of Universal
Peace,” “life is not the greatest good if the foundation of all
morality is that many things must be preferred to life; and really
death is not the greatest evil, if we are men, so to speak, only in so
fair as we rise above the fear of death.”

Our early youth, for which death scarcely exists, knows nothing of
the value of days. It thinks our strength inexhaustible and squanders
it idly. When we begin to see, around us and in us, the charm and the
sadness of transient things, we feel life in all its fulness because
we are amazed at the incessant flight of time. Our days are numbered.
But the divisions of time are purely conventional. How many days do we
lose when again the fervor of life concentrates itself in a few minutes
of consciousness? The last minutes that we are destined to live may be
the most intense. They may become an important part of our existence
if we know that they are the last. They have this tremendous power of
summing up in themselves all our past days, of completing the design of
our life, of defining its outlines, and sometimes of revealing them for
the first time. They bring us the supreme opportunity to correct our
faults, to perform the most imperative duties which we have forgotten,
to mark the current of our thoughts which has been running to waste in
our ordinary pursuits. What right has anyone to steal these minutes
from us? It is indeed to steal them, if they are left to us, stripped
of their real importance. The man who is about to die should act like
a man who is about to die, not as a man who has plenty of time left.
You think, you doctors, to soothe him by hiding his danger from him;
you take away from him a part of his life whose importance could never
be measured in duration. He will waste his remaining strength, if he
has kept his mind intact, in guessing at the truth, in scrutinising the
blank faces around him, in questioning the throbs of his pulse, the
beating of his heart. He will be a prey to all the terrors of doubt,
when he has the right to finish his life by preparing for death. By
what right do you still decree that the question of his bequest alone
shall occupy him? What do you know of his thoughts, of his soul, of the
future life, of God? Who has solved these questions? And if you have
solved them for yourselves, where do you find the authority to solve
them for others? Do not take useless responsibilities on yourselves.
Everyone has his own, and that is sufficient. It is not for you to set
yourselves up as judges, to ask if the dying man has any affairs to
settle--he may have some of which you know nothing--you have no right
to choose your confidant, and to be inhuman and cruel. For it is not
human to injure life by deforming it, and it does deform it to banish
from it all thought of death, which gives it all its significance. A
beautiful death is the indispensable complement of a beautiful life,
and the ransom of a wicked one. Yes, we must raise ourselves above the
fear of death, and for that we must begin to see life as it is, so
that we may live bravely, fully, nobly. The fear of death is one with
the fear of living, which makes us shrink from the great efforts, the
boldness, and the sacrifices that life demands from us. Only one of all
these doctors understood this, and that was Sir John Fayrer, a member
of the Royal Society of London, and head of the Sanitary Department in
India, who dared to say, in the midst of a flock of his colleagues
bleating with fear: “An experience of more than sixty years makes me
declare very clearly to you: I do not agree that death should surprise
a patient; he should be prepared for it.”


                                  VI


Life is, after all, such a precious thing that one must neither reject
it entirely like those lazy egoists, who soften and contract it to such
a degree that it loses all its value; nor partly reject it like those
vigorous egoists, who claim to subordinate it to their choice.

The very act of opening one’s eyes to the light of day involves a debt
of gratitude to those who have permitted us to see it. Formerly in the
French family there was no doubt as to the goodness of life. The old
French family wrote its own story in its “commonplace books.” These
commonplace books were humble volumes of accounts, but it soon became
the custom to jot down, besides the record of expenditure, the most
important facts of private life, such as marriages, deaths, births.
Then there were added a few reflections, which sufficed to express a
whole range of feeling, a complete conception of life. We have a great
number of these books. They recall the time of our fathers and speak to
us with the majesty of a last will and testament. It is the gospel of
the wise. And it preaches faith in life to those who are inspired by
their fathers and are content to be worthy successors to them.

Though one should run through them all, one would not find a single
denial of the goodness of life. These workmen, farmers, merchants,
always welcome a new-born child with an expression of joy, even if he
comes after many others. The forms of baptism are all acts of faith
like the one that I came across in the book of Pagès, a merchant of
Amiens, who is celebrating the birth of a ninth child: “The divine
goodness, continuing to shed its blessings on our marriage, has favored
us with the birth of a son.” In the same way, the domestic diary of
Joseph de Sudre, of Avignon, is the story--I should say, the epic--of
his efforts, his privations, his savings, in order to be able to bring
up his numerous offspring. In spite of adverse circumstances and bad
harvests, he neglects nothing that contributes to that end. The old
French language used only one word to describe the maternal feeding and
moral education of the child. It was the verb _nourrir_, to “bring
up,” which we have degraded. Our Joseph de Sudre loses his son, a
captain in the King’s service, a man of great promise. After his short
and pathetic funeral speech he adds; “I have suffered poverty for him
with joy.”

Faith in the goodness of life, acceptance of all its burdens,
confidence in the future, were formerly the code of the French family.
Since Jean Jacques Rousseau we have replaced belief in the goodness of
life by faith in the innate goodness of man. It does not produce the
same results.

If now we ask those geniuses who represent the highest achievements
of humanity what we ought to think about life, how would they answer
us? The great minds in art, literature, and history, are only great
when they animate us, when they quicken the movement of our blood and
stir our resolution. They realise for us the changing beauty of the
world and the transient charm of our days. No artist is great without
unlimited love of life. I will quote only one example, the most
touching; that of Beethoven. Financial worries, family troubles, a most
cruel malady--that deafness which shut him up within himself--moral
loneliness, unrealised love, such was the record of his life. A weak
soul would have given way to despair. From the depth of all his
distress he undertook to celebrate joy, and he did so in his Ninth
Symphony.

It is told of him that once, visiting a lady who had just lost her
son and not finding words both strong and gentle enough to express
his sympathy, he sat down at the piano and played. He played a song
of sorrow, but a song of hope also. Thus in our suffering the great
masters of art come to our help.

In the lives of great men we can learn courage and the taste for
life. There is no reading more consoling, and I quite understand the
influence exercised by Plutarch. I wish that biographies of the great
men of France, well written, concise and vigorous, were recommended to
be read, particularly by our young men. They would incite them to live
well. They give us constant occasion to compare our empty days with
those well-filled lives, and then we bewail our inaction, our idleness,
the pettiness of our lot, which we do not know how to enlarge.

In the life of La Play, that admirable defender of the French family,
I lately read this anecdote. He had just recovered from a serious
illness, which had brought him to the brink of the grave and the course
of which he had traced with his usual clearness. After his recovery,
when he was asked what thoughts the feeling of his approaching end had
provoked in him, he replied in these memorable words, which may serve
me as a conclusion:

“From the brink of the grave I measured, not the vanity of life, but
its importance.”

                                                                  H. B.

April and September, 1905.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Grazia Deledda, “Cenere.”]

[Footnote 2: Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life.”]




                          THE FEAR OF LIVING




                          THE FEAR OF LIVING




                                PART I

                               CHAPTER I

                          MARCEL’S HOMECOMING


Madame Guibert was waiting in the drawing-room at “Le Maupas,” ready
to go out. In one hand she held her umbrella, though the weather was
fine and the barometer high, while with the other hand she raised the
long crape veil draped over her widow’s bonnet. She sat down for a
moment, attempting to wait patiently and, after several glances at the
large old-fashioned clock, surmounted by a threatening bronze figure
of Vercingetorix the Gaul, she rose again and crossed the room with
slow, lagging steps. She seemed to be deep in a study of the quaint
old clock-face. She sat down again; this time not on one of the many
well-worn armchairs, whose familiar comfort seemed so inviting, but
instead upon a cane-seated chair, from which she could rise more
promptly and with less effort.

Madame Guibert was advanced in years, short and stout, and scant of
breath. In her face gentleness was combined with strength. The pale
blue eyes, infinitely tender in their expression and full of unshed
tears, revealed a timid and loving nature, easily frightened by the
outside world, while the square chin and the thick-set, compact figure
suggested energy and endurance. The cheeks, still fresh in spite of
the years, showed the noble blood in her veins and a well-preserved,
vigorous constitution.

After hesitating several times she summoned up sufficient courage to
open the door and call: “Paule, are you coming? It is time to start.”

“Oh, Mother, we have plenty of time,” came the reply in fresh, clear
tones.

“The clock says seven,” insisted Madame Guibert, wearily.

“You know that clock is three quarters of an hour fast.”

“But it may have suddenly gone slow. It is very irregular.”

The girl’s answer was merely a burst of laughter, completely devoid of
any hint of sarcasm. Then she added:

“I’m putting on my hat; I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Madame Guibert sat down again, resigned. Her eyes wandered about the
little country drawing-room, through whose windows, with their double
white curtains freshly washed and ironed, the light of a summer evening
broke softly, filtering through the foliage of the tall trees outside.
The modest furniture was all in keeping; no touch of luxury marred the
effect. Its seasoned age bore cheerful testimony to past generations
and vanished tastes. There were two engravings, a hundred years old,
representing charming episodes from _Paul et Virginie_. In “The
Bath” the young girl was modestly holding up the robe that threatened
to slip from her smooth shoulder, as she gently touched the cold water
with a pretty, shivering foot. And in “The Torrent,” opposite, the
youthful Paul might be seen carrying his little friend, a light burden,
as he carefully crossed the turbulent stream. A more recent lithograph
depicted “Napoleon’s Farewell at Fontainebleau,” in which against the
dark background of thronging grenadiers the white knee-breeches of
the Emperor stood out in relief, as the central point of the historic
scene. Lastly, as if to give a more modern touch to the walls, a faded
water-color pretended to have caught the azure of an eastern sky and
also the motley hues of Abd-el-Kader’s smala, captured by a charge of
French cavalry. An upright piano, its top covered with scores, and two
music cabinets crammed to overflowing indicated an artist’s enthusiasm
for music, whereas a former grand, now bereft of its harmonious soul,
did duty as a rosewood table.

Madame Guibert’s eyes no longer took in these familiar objects, but
they caught sight of a flower-vase out of its proper place. She was
accustomed to orderliness so this lapse annoyed her and she hastened
to set it straight. This vase held her customary offering, during the
season of roses, before the cherished portraits that were at once her
joy and her sorrow. This honor was paid daily at the domestic altar,
yet withal she did not reproach herself unduly to-day for her neglect,
because of the natural preoccupation which filled her heart and mind.
From their sombre frames an enlarged photograph of her husband, Dr.
Maurice Guibert, who had died at the beginning of the previous year, a
victim to his tireless devotion to his patients during an epidemic of
typhoid fever; and also another portrait, that of her daughter Thérèse,
called to Himself by God when she was only twelve years of age, seemed
to smile upon her on this day of rejoicing in her house of mourning.
For was not the second son, Marcel, returning to France, after having
taken a prominent part in an expedition against the Fahavalos of
Madagascar?

After three years’ absence Marcel was coming back safe and sound, a
Captain at twenty-eight years of age, and decorated with the Legion of
Honor. The telegram sent off that morning from Marseilles had been read
and re-read, and was still lying open on the drawing-room table. It
announced his arrival at Chambéry on the seven-thirty train. And that
was why Madame Guibert had gotten herself ready two hours too soon. She
was going to town to meet the homecomer. Already her thoughts were with
that train which was s ding along the iron track from Lyons.

Yet she knew that the meeting would be agitating and that she would
need all her courage. When Marcel had learnt of the death of his
father, he was far away, on the pestilential banks of a Madagascar
river. When death calls those whom we love while we are far away, what
infinite cruelty and bitterness are added to the blow!

The young man’s first glance would be at her mourning clothes and the
recent indications of her advancing years. There would be a shadow
between them. She braced herself for the effort, as she reflected:
“When the children came home by train it was always _he_ who
watched for their arrival on the platform. _I_ must be there
to-day in his stead.”

At this moment Paule entered the room. A brilliant frame of black
hair set off the rounded ivory of her face. A black dress accentuated
her slimness, but she did not look fragile. Resolution and courage
were mingled in her proud bearing and firm glance. The glory of youth
illumined her sombreness with a radiance like that thrown on the sea at
night by the brilliant lights of a ship. This girl of twenty had known
suffering at an age when the sensibilities are keenest. She had steeled
herself in order that she might not falter; and the secret of her
struggle was revealed in her carriage. But withal her dark eyes shone
the more brilliantly on this account and her face wore a new gladness,
as a rose-tree its first blossom.

Her mother was surprised to see her without her hat.

“What, not ready yet? That is foolish.”

“But you are not ready either,” replied the girl with a bright smile.

She had in her hand a mourning bonnet edged with a white piping, such
as widows wear, as she crossed the room with a quick, light step.

“Don’t get up, Mother, please. I want you to look nice when you meet
your son, so I have made this bonnet for you. Don’t you like the shape?
The one you have on is all worn out.” And with a grace that completely
conquered her mother’s opposition, she continued: “Let me be your maid.
Your arm pains you.”

“It is my rheumatism,” murmured Madame Guibert.

When she had changed her bonnet, without even a glance in the glass,
she said timidly to her daughter, for she did not wish to displease her:

“And now, darling, don’t you think it is nearly time for us to start?”

“Yes,” said Paule, “I will go and tell Trélaz.”

Trélaz was the farmer who was to drive the carriage for them to
Chambéry station.

When Paule had gone Mme. Guibert gazed at a group-photograph of her
children. There had been six of them then. Now there were only five.
Étienne, the eldest, was an engineer in Tonkin. Marcel an officer
in the Tirailleurs. Marguerite was a Sister of Charity. François,
after failing to pass his examinations, had joined his brother in the
Far East. And Paule was the last jewel in her crown of life. What
separations, she thought--some of them eternal--had she endured in the
course of sixty years!

Paule returned from the farm with the news that Trélaz was ready. She
put on her hat in an instant and could not refrain from protesting
against her mother’s impatience. She glanced at the old clock which
mocked the dock-makers and despite innumerable repairs preserved its
own independence of spirit.

“We shall have to wait nearly an hour at the station,” she said.

“I should not like to be late,” insisted Madame Guibert.

And as she left the house she turned to the old servant, who was
putting on her spectacles in order that no details of the start might
escape her.

“Marie, mind that there are no tramps about!”

She lifted herself with an effort into the rustic carriage which had
drawn up in front of the steps. When she had settled down she smiled
sweetly at her daughter, and the fleeting expression brought back to
her face for just an instant the softness that had been so attractive
in her youth. Paule stepped up lightly beside her.

“Now, Trélaz! You will have to drive rather quickly. But don’t use the
whip, and be careful going down hill.”

“We always get there somehow,” replied the farmer philosophically.

The carriage started. It was an old time vehicle, of a long-forgotten
make. The seats ran lengthwise, and on them the passengers sat back to
back, with their feet in a wooden frame. The oddity of its build was a
never failing source of jest as people took their places in it.

The mare no less venerable, her hoof now and again striking the
rattling wheel as she descended the avenue of chestnuts and heavy
foliaged plane-trees at a walking pace and passed through the ever open
gate--necessarily so indeed, on account of its useless rusty hinges.
She turned into the Vimines road under the shadow of the oak-woods,
and, leaving behind a level-crossing, came out on the high road from
Lyons to Chambéry, which runs through the village of Cognin. There,
the road being easier, the old brown mare stepped less cautiously as
though she no longer cared how she went, and finished by breaking into
a swinging trot which seemed much too fast for the timid Madame Guibert.

The sun had already disappeared behind the Beacon, one of the peaks of
the Lépine range, but the clear light of the summer evening hung over
the countryside for quite a long time after.

“Mother, look at the mountains,” said Paule.

They form a vast circle around Chambéry, and their rocky heights were
tinged with a gorgeous pink, while around their base and sides floated,
like a delicate veil, that bluish haze which is the forerunner of fine
morrows. But Madame Guibert’s anxiety was too keen to allow her to
contemplate the reflection of the setting sun on the summits of the
hills. Suddenly she revealed the cause of her preoccupation:

“Suppose the train is ahead of time!”

And although she had spoken earnestly, she was the first to smile at
her own supposition.

At last her eyes noted a soft transparent shadow climbing the
mountains, and leaving the cross of Le Nivolet bathed in radiant light
for an instant she called her daughter’s attention to this symbol, a
token of shining faith. Then the same serene peace fell on all nature
and, for the first time in long months, on the faces of the two sad
women.

As they neared Chambéry, a break drawn by two fast-trotting horses,
passed Trélaz’s old coach.

“It is the Dulaurens’s carriage,” said Paule. “They are going to Aix.
They did not bow to us.”

“I don’t suppose they recognised us.”

“Oh, yes, they did. But since we gave up our fortune to save uncle
people do not bow to us as they used to.”

She alluded to a family misfortune which had occurred shortly before
her father’s death. Madame Guibert took her daughter’s hand:

“But that is nothing, dear. Just think, in a few minutes we shall see
Marcel.”

After a short silence Paule asked:

“Wasn’t it father who attended and cured Alice Dulaurens, during that
epidemic of typhoid fever at Cognin which finally carried him off?”

“Yes,” murmured the old woman, depressed at this recollection. And it
was she who continued softly and uncomplainingly:

“And they even forgot to settle the bill for attendance. That is often
the way with rich people. They don’t know what it means for others to
live.”

“The reason is because they understand only how to amuse themselves.”

Madame Guibert saw a wave of bitterness cross her daughter’s face,
whose every expression she knew.

“We must not envy them,” she said. “In amusing themselves, they forget
life. They do not know what fills our hearts. I shall soon be sixty
years old. Count my sacrifices and the dear ones I have lost. I am
separated from my daughter Thérèse and from my husband, who was my
strength. Your eldest sister, Marguerite, is a nun, and I have not seen
her for five years. Étienne and François are in Tonkin, and I do not
know my grandson who has just been born out there. Marcel is coming
back after three years of absence and terrible anxiety. Still my lot
has been fortunate. I bless God, who tried me after having crowned me
with blessings. Every day I have experienced His goodness. Even in my
misery He gave me a support in you.”

With her little ungloved hand Paule pressed her mother’s, cracked and
wrinkled.

“Yes, Mother, you are right, I shall complain no more.”

The two miles which separate “Le Maupas” from Chambéry were at
length covered. Trélaz set the ladies down at the station and drove
his conveyance over to a corner of the Square, away from the hotel
omnibuses, the cabs, and the carriages. But the rows of horses envied
his mare her well-filled bag of hay which he put before her.

Paule, looking at the clock, noticed with surprise that it was only ten
minutes past seven. Her mother saw her face.

“I told you that we should be late.”

The girl smiled: “Late because we shall have to wait only twenty
minutes?”

They reached the waiting-room, but as soon as Madame Guibert had opened
the door she drew back. Paule gently urged her forward. The room was
full of people in evening dress. They were the aristocracy of Chambéry
waiting for the theatre-train to Aix-les-Bains. Among them were the
Dulaurens family.

Disconcerted, Madame Guibert turned as if to go out, whispering
to Paule, “Let us go to the third class waiting-room. It will be
pleasanter there.”

“Why?” asked the girl.

At that moment a good-looking young man detached himself from a group
of women and came towards them. They recognised Lieutenant Jean
Berlier, a friend of Marcel. He bowed to them with a courtesy which
expressed his deep sympathy.

“You have come to meet the Captain, haven’t you, Madame? I know you
don’t like travelling.”

“Oh, no, I don’t.”

“How pleased he will be to see you; he will soon be here!”

“In the past,” said the old lady to the young man, whom she had known
as a boy, “his father used to meet him. You will understand.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jean Berlier, and in order not to dwell on so
painful a subject in a public place he added:

“I shall be able to shake Marcel by the hand before I start.”

“You will come and see him at our house, won’t you? Are you going away?”

“For one night. We are going to Aix. It is the first night of ‘La Vie
de Bohème.’ But theatres don’t interest you.”

Sincere as ever, Madame Guibert replied: “I never went to one in my
life. To tell you frankly, I do not regret it.”

Although she spoke in low tones, there were two girls in light dresses
who could hear her, and one of them, a bold-looking brunette, burst out
laughing. But perhaps their fun was at the expense of a lieutenant of
dragoons, who was speaking to them. Paule looked at her contemptuously
from head to foot, her dark eyes flashing like a swift lightning streak.

“Why are you standing?” Jean went on. The old lady chose a seat beside
a vacant armchair in a dark corner, as the humble and timid are wont
to do.

“No, take the armchair, Mother,” said Paule rather brusquely. She had
just exchanged bows--stiff on her part, cordial on the other’s--with
the other of the two young girls, who instead of laughing had blushed.

After a few more words the young man left and rejoined his party. Paule
looked after him and heard him say to Madame Dulaurens:

“Yes, that is Madame Guibert. She is waiting for her son, who is
returning from Madagascar.”

“Which son? She has so many.”

“Why, the officer--Marcel.”

“What is his rank?”

“Captain. He has been decorated and is famous,” said Jean Berlier
hurriedly. He was rather annoyed at being thus questioned, for the dark
eyed girl was calling him.

But Madame Dulaurens would not release him.

“Famous?” she demanded. “What did he do?”

“Didn’t you hear about the fight at Andriba, when his company’s action
decided the day?”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. The name of Marcel Guibert is known throughout the whole
of France.”

This, of course, was a great exaggeration. Modern France does not make
a display of her military glory. But Madame Dulaurens was impressed
and immediately went over to Madame Guibert. The widow was becoming
interesting, in spite of her ruined fortunes, if her son had so great a
reputation.

“The Captain comes home to-night, Madame,” she began. “The thoughts of
us all followed him out there during that terrible campaign, in which
he did so much honor to his country. The papers told us the story of
his bravery at the battle of Andriba.”

Behind his wife, Monsieur Dulaurens, a mild, ceremonious little man,
was nodding his head in sign of approval, while Clément, a fat and
jovial youth of eighteen, who had listened to his mother’s words with
amazement, pulled at the sleeve of Jean Berlier and whispered:

“Mother has no lack of assurance, has she? She reads nothing but
the society paragraphs in the ‘_Gaulois_’ How could she have
remembered a Malagasy name? I know them all--even the most difficult
ones. I got them up for a joke once, because of course I know nothing
about the expedition. I’ll tell you a few. Ankerramadinika ...”

In the midst of the throng Madame Guibert felt painfully uncomfortable.
Just as her poor mourning robes (though carefully mended by her
daughter’s hand) contrasted with the fashionable evening gowns, so
too she felt that not a thought in common united her to these society
people. The whole party had come up and was complimenting her. After
Madame Dulaurens’s congratulations, she received those of Madame
Orlandi, an old Italian Countess who lived in retirement at Chambéry,
and whose many nervous complaints had provided sufficient employment
for her doctor. De Marthenay, the lieutenant of dragoons, fixed her
with his eyeglass in curiosity that was almost insolent. She answered
the questions addressed to her very simply and timidly, her cheeks
suffused with blushes; and Paule, noticing her plight, came to her
assistance. She was more at ease, but could not prevent a certain
stiffness showing itself in her manner, in spite of the friendly
demonstrations of the two girls--the brunette, Isabelle Orlandi, whose
remarks were as affected as her attitudes, and still more the other,
Alice Dulaurens, who was fair and naturally gracious. The latter
overwhelmed Paule with attentions and kindness. She had a pretty voice,
lisping and softening the hard sounds, and blending all her words in an
even sweetness.

“So your brother is coming! Aren’t you happy? It is years since I saw
him. Do you remember the time we used to play games together at Le
Maupas or at La Chênaie?”

“Yes,” answered Paule. “But we do not play any more now. The garden at
Le Maupas is neglected, and that of La Chênaie is too well cared for.”

“Why don’t you come over any more? You must come.”

Paule wondered why this former schoolfellow of hers at the Sacred
Heart, from whom life had separated her so far, should show her so much
friendship. She looked at her own black dress, so plain, and simple,
and admired without a touch of envy the light blue bodice, trimmed with
white lace and cut rather low, from which Alice’s white neck, delicate
and supple, rose like a frail flower. From the clothes her eyes passed
to the wearer’s face. The features were refined and clear-cut, and the
faultless complexion was suffused with a dainty pink. She could not
help saying:

“How beautiful you are, Alice!”

Immediately the fresh cheeks mantled, and while Mademoiselle Dulaurens
stood aside to allow a traveller to pass, Paule saw how the very
indolence and half-weariness of her movements bestowed a certain
languishing grace on this charming and delicate girl, in whose presence
she realised the more her own youthful strength.

“Oh, no, it is you, Paule, ...” protested Alice Dulaurens.

But the noise of the Lyons express suddenly broke in upon the
conversation. The whole party rushed out of the waiting-room. The
Dulaurens family and their friends began to look for first class
carriages in the section of the train intended for the theatre-goers.
From the other portion the passengers were already hastening towards
the exit.

The first of these was a tall, thin young man, very erect, who held
his head thrown back with a haughty air. In his hand he was carrying a
sword wrapped in green serge. As soon as he saw Madame Guibert he ran
towards her and was soon folded in her arms.

“My son!” she cried, and, in spite of her resolution to be brave, she
burst into sobs.

But Marcel straightened himself up after the embrace and gazed with
tender emotion at this old figure on whom trials had left their traces.
A change came over the bronzed, almost hard, features of the young man.
There was no need for them to utter the name that trembled on their
lips, and the same pious memory stirred both their hearts. The joy of
the meeting gave a poignant new life to the old sorrow.

Paule contemplated with a softened expression her tall, handsome
brother and her old mother. By the step of their compartment Alice
Dulaurens and Isabelle Orlandi turned, and they too watched the
greetings. The eyes of the first rested sympathetically on Marcel,
while the eyes of the second looked ironically at Madame Guibert’s
stout and agitated form.

Jean Berlier, standing slightly aside, was waiting respectfully. He now
came up to Paule.

“How happy they are!” he said. And then he added, with a tinge of
melancholy, “When I return from Algeria no one is ever waiting for me.”

As Marcel kissed his young sister, Jean came forward, crying:

“Have you a greeting for me too?”

“What, Jean!” said Marcel, and the two men embraced warmly. Jean was
moved but in an instant he was again smiling gaily.

“I shall see you soon,” he said. “I must run now. My train is going.”

“Where are you off to?” asked Marcel.

Jean, on his way to his carriage, half turned and shouted merrily:

“We’re going to show ourselves off at Aix.”

And his fingers seemed to point at random to the various groups
clambering into the theatre-train.

Marcel Guibert glanced quickly at the rout of gaily dressed figures.
But Paule, looking round, saw Alice leaning out of the window of
her carriage to bid her good-bye. She waved her hand to her quickly
and undemonstratively, as though she had some misgiving or some
superstitious feeling of fear about this seductive vision. Paule was
very highly sensitized and her premature misfortunes had made her
oversensitive. “Why all these advances?” she asked herself. As her dark
eyes rested on her soldier brother, who was leading his mother away on
his arm, she added to herself: “Too much good fortune and not enough
courage.”

Seeing Trélaz’s vehicle, Marcel cried:

“What, our old carriage!”

“It is the only one we have kept,” explained Madame Guibert,
apologetically.

This reply Marcel had not expected when he made the remark. The ancient
conveyance had recalled his childhood to him, and now it seemed to him
that it also signified the decay of the family. His face darkened.
He understood all of a sudden the material difficulties which must
have increased the suffering at Le Maupas. Having no personal needs,
and accustomed as he was to live on very little, he felt now for his
mother and sister and divined the bitterness of their straits. But
Madame Guibert was saying to herself, “We ought to have taken a station
carriage in his honor.”

They drove across Chambéry, the sleepy capital of Savoy, which the
historic castle sets off as if it were a military plume, proud and
delicate against the sky. Marcel breathed his native air rapturously.
When they left the town, Trélaz’s antiquated equipage recalled a host
of recollections. The scene before his eyes suggested his happy,
spirited youth. How often, from the Vimines woods, had he enjoyed the
bold outlines and vivid lighting of the picture! With the naked walls
of Pas-de-la-Fosse in the foreground, and of Granier in the background,
which looks out from above over the nearer mountains, it was like a
wide sweeping curve of verdure outstretched, and harmoniously defined
by three steeples: Belle Combette, softly ensconced among the trees,
like a sheep amid the lush grass; Montagnol, the tallest, sombre and
dominant like some fortress; Saint-Cassin, humbler and slighter,
resting against the thick woods which almost concealed it. A strange
incongruous landscape, tempering the harshness of the rough and
threatening crags with the sweet softness of this peaceful slope.

When the carriage left the high road, it passed the level crossing over
the railway from Saint-André-le-Gaz, and followed the Vimines road, up
the steep gradient which plunges into the forest and leads past the
open gate of Le Maupas. Marcel got out here to lighten the horse’s
burden. He was the first to reach the little rustic house smothered, as
in the old days, under the wistaria, jasmine, and roses. And too, as in
the old days the twilight lent to the trees in the avenue a sombre,
placid, serious look. As he walked, the gravel in the courtyard made
the same crunching sound as of old.

On the threshold he awaited his mother and helped her ascend the steps;
and when they had entered he clasped the poor, weeping woman to his
heart. Paule also at last surrendered herself to the emotion she had
too long restrained. The head of the family was no longer there. On
the threshold of the home his son had brought back to mind the strong
profile, the kindly smile, the self-reliance of the departed.

In this meeting to-day three people tasted the whole flavor of human
life, with its mingling of joy and grief.

Meanwhile the Dulaurens family, Madame Orlandi and her daughter, and
Lieutenant Armand de Marthenay, had taken their places in the same
first class carriage. Isabelle took possession of a corner and with the
utmost difficulty kept another for her admirer, Jean Berlier. But when
he made up his mind to enter the carriage, at the very moment the train
was starting, he was not too well received by the girl.

“Why don’t you stay on the platform and embrace all the men that pass?”
she asked.

Jean smiled: “I do the same to the ladies.”

Isabelle was not disarmed. “You made a show of yourself with that
Guibert lot. It was ridiculous.”

Alice Dulaurens blushed, but did not dare to protest. The young man was
not so easily disconcerted. He did not disdain, in his flirtations, a
tone of irony and mockery, which exasperated, if it also attracted, his
companion, the pretty and spoilt darling of her family.

“It is true,” he admitted, “that the Guiberts, on meeting each other
after three years of separation and mourning, neglected to conform to
custom to please you. And even your dress did not win a single glance
from the handsome captain.”

“The handsome captain, indeed!”

“He is bald,” observed de Marthenay, whose own thick hair stuck up like
a tooth-brush.

“Yes, he became so in the colonies. In a French garrison he would
perhaps have kept an abundant covering on his head.”

Isabelle would not own herself vanquished. A spitefulness to which she
would not have confessed urged her to attack Jean’s friends, and she
went beyond all bounds:

“You heard, I suppose, that your captain’s mother is a perfect
phenomenon? She has never set foot in a theatre! I wonder what sort of
a life she has led.”

Jean Berlier, who had the greatest respect for Madame Guibert, became
bitter.

“She has done what you will never do, Mademoiselle, she has lived for
the sake of others.”

“That is not living at all,” retorted Isabelle.

“Do you think so? For my part, I believe that she has lived more than
you will ever live, if you were to exist for a hundred years.”

“Oh, indeed! I defy anyone to live at a higher pressure than I do.”

“You get excitement, but that’s not the same thing. Of what effort are
you capable?” And then, cutting his lecture short, the young man asked
with a laugh: “Are you even capable of a love match?”

“Certainly not! You mean, I suppose, one without money? Thank you for
nothing. Fancy vegetating mournfully on dry bread and cotton dresses!”
As she spoke, her lovely teeth looked sharp and greedy.

“Come, cheer up,” said Jean, “and show me your hand.”

She held out her fine ungloved hand. He pretended to examine it
carefully.

“I see that you will marry a man forty years of age, ugly, and
a millionaire. But, after the marriage, he will show his real
disposition, sordid avarice. One is always punished in the same way in
which one has sinned.”

The grave sententious tone in which he uttered his nonsense amused the
whole carriage.

When the conversation had again become general, Isabelle, restored once
more to calm, murmured gaily to her _vis-à-vis_:

“So much the worse for the miser! I shall be untrue to him.”

“With me, do you mean?” asked Jean, smiling.

“Perhaps with you. Yes, certainly with you!”

And again bursting into laughter, she showed her white teeth, as sound
as a puppy’s, while she stared boldly at the young man who appealed so
much to her taste.

Alice, abashed by the boldness of the conversation, blushed for her
companion. Then wrapping herself in her own thoughts, she fell half
asleep and dreamed of the love-match which Isabelle despised, but in
connection with which certain lately-seen features dimly presented
themselves to her imagination.

Madame Dulaurens, preoccupied about the success of her At Homes
during the season, remarked to her son, who was repeating to her some
fantastic Madagascar names; “He seems to be quite a hero. We must
certainly invite him.”

And her husband, resuming the thread of a long and peaceful
conversation, agreed with Madame Orlandi.

“Above all things, calm must be preserved. That is the secret of life.”




                              CHAPTER II

                          BROTHER AND SISTER


In the friendship between brother and sister there is a frank and
simple sweetness that makes it a sentiment apart from all others. In
its nature it is free from the violent outbursts of love and those
passionate transports which are too intoxicating to be lasting. It
is distinguished, however, from ordinary friendship between persons
of the same sex, by the element of modest discretion and tenderness
introduced into it by the woman. What makes it still more singular is
the marvellous ability of the two parties to such a friendship to think
and to feel alike, this springing from a common origin and a childhood
spent together. The two can then understand a half-uttered word, can
call back memories at the same moment, can live again together the days
of old and inhale again the perfume of the past. Even love itself lacks
this quality and may well envy its possession.

Seated in two basket-chairs in the garden of Le Maupas, Marcel and
Paule Guibert, with no waste of useless confidences, realised the joy
of discovering that during their separation life had ripened and
molded their souls alike even though a great distance had separated
them. They thought otherwise than in former days, but they still
thought together.

“I am so happy here,” said the young man, “that I want to do nothing
all day long.”

Marcel was tired and needed rest. In spite of his robust health,
he showed some traces of his life in the colonies. He still had
attacks of fever, though they grew rarer and rarer. He looked to the
health-bringing air of Savoy to put new life into him.

It was one of those calm summer afternoons in the country, when it
seems that one can almost feel the vibration of the sunshine. Not a
breath of air fanned their faces. Only in the tree-tops a lazy breeze
stirred the delicate leaves of the lime-trees, which trembled and
showed by turn the dark green of their upper and the pale green of
their lower surfaces.

On the rustic table, its round top cut from a single slate, were
scattered papers and letters. Paule set herself to open the mail to
which her brother paid so little heed.

“More articles about you,” she cried, “in the _Clarion des Alpes_
and _La Savoie Républicaine_. Do you want to read them?”

“No, please not,” begged the captain.

“Some invitations,” Paule went on. “The men of your year are giving a
dinner in your honor. A season-ticket for the Aix-les-Bains Casino.
Another for the Villa des Fleurs. The Baroness de Vittoz is at home on
Tuesdays.”

“What is all this to me? I want to see nobody, absolutely nobody.”

“You have become fashionable! You must play your part. They are
disposing of your liberty. That’s one way of sharing in your laurels.”

“Let’s agree not to talk about it, Paule dear.”

“But everyone is talking about it. Glory is the rage to-day. Some day
soon the Dulaurenses will call upon us, and other people too whom we
have not seen since the story of our ruin got about.”

Her smooth forehead, overshadowed by dark hair, still wore the furrow
which testified to the bitterness of that time of trial.

Marcel said nothing. He let himself be carried away by the
multitudinous memories connected with the land which was his
forefathers’. In his mind’s eye he could see the shadows of the past
springing up from the ground about him and hovering round him like a
flock of birds. Only the members of large families can know the happy
exaltation of spirit which has its birth in an environment that is
fresh, gay, and frank. This blessing, which changes childhood with a
stroke of the wand into fairyland and is able to shed its sweetness
throughout middle life right down to old age, is the reward of those
who have had the courage to live and to perpetuate life. So Marcel
now smiled upon another tiny Marcel, whom he could see distinctly
scampering over the neighboring fields with a merry little troop of
brothers and sisters. Then began with Paule the series of “Do you
remembers.” He plunged back into the far away years when the soul is
still wrapped in mystery, and finally he said:

“Do you remember.... But no, you were not born then. We were lying on
the grass. They were our first holidays, I think. Father used to tell
us about the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” and we straightway translated
the stories into action. I was in turn Hector and the cunning Ulysses.
But at that time I preferred Hector, for he is generous and of that
tragic courage which impresses a child’s mind. Since then reading Homer
has been to me like visiting a friend. Who can tell whether or not I
owe to these influences my taste for adventure?”

“But you are not thinking of going back?” enquired Paule anxiously.
“Mother has aged greatly. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, she is a little bent now, and her cheeks are sometimes pale. You
are watching over her for us. You are our security, Paule, the comfort
of all the rest of us, who are scattered over the world.”

The girl did not reply. Marcel regretted his remark, for he felt its
selfishness. Of all Dr. Guibert’s children Paule had suffered most
directly from the blow of the financial disaster which had crushed the
whole family through the misfortunes of an uncle. She had lost her
dowry and thereby many a chance of marriage. Her brothers depended on
her devotion to cherish their mother’s old age, as if she must always
forget her own life and feel in vain the tender beating of her young
heart.

Marcel gazed at her a long time. With affectionate admiration he
regarded her graceful figure, so supple and so full of the promise of
future strength; the pure tint of her complexion, accentuated by the
black of her dress; her deep, sombre eyes, so sweet withal, the eyes of
a woman who has tasted life and knows it, without fearing it; he saw
the whole charming picture of a maiden both proud and virtuous. Why
should she not inspire love?

He noticed the dark hair overhanging her troubled brow, and sought to
make her smile.

“I love that black hair of yours,” he said. “I have never seen any so
black. How proudly you carry the weight of it. Do you remember, when
you were little and wore it down your back, there was so much of it
that the peasant women coming back from market used to stop to look at
you and say, ‘What a shame to put a false plait upon the poor child!’
And your nurse was very angry, ‘A false plait, is it! Come and pull
it and you’ll see if it comes off in your hands.’ So they actually
tested the genuineness of your hair, and you wept because you were too
beautiful!”

Slowly, leaning on the iron balustrade and setting each foot in turn
on every step, Madame Guibert was coming down to her children. As
an autumn flower blooms in a deserted garden, so a feeble smile had
lighted up her face since Marcel’s arrival. He came now to meet her and
set her chair in a sheltered spot.

“Are you comfortable, Mother?” he asked. The smile on the old face
deepened.

“My dear big boy, you are so like _him_.”

Marcel’s face grew grave. “It is eighteen months now since he passed
on,” he said. “I shall never forget that night at Ambato! I wandered
round the camp. I called to him. I called to you all. I felt death
coming to me....”

There was a sorrowful silence for a moment, and then Madame Guibert
spoke again.

“Eighteen months! Is it possible? ... Yet I have lived through them,
thanks to Paule. While the breath of life is in me, I shall thank God
for giving me such a husband, such sons and daughters.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and began the painful recital for
which her son was waiting.

“Your Uncle Marc’s misfortune was the beginning of all our sorrows. We
were too happy, Marcel. Your father was the embodiment of strength,
self-reliance, and hard work. After the most wearying days he always
came home happy. And you all succeeded in your careers.”

“Some were jealous of you,” said Paule.

“It is better to be envied than pitied,” added her brother, who was as
proud as she.

“Your uncle’s bank at Annecy prospered, until a confidential clerk
absconded with title deeds and deposits, and Marc, unable to bear the
temporary storm aroused by this flight, and stunned by the shock,
committed suicide. God grant that he has been permitted to repent! Your
father left directly. He understood the situation. All was paid, both
capital and interest--but we had to sacrifice the greater part of our
fortune. However, we were able to save Le Maupas, which belongs to the
family.”

“Le Maupas is to all of us the living picture of our childhood days,”
said Marcel.

Madame Guibert continued, “Before disposing of his fortune your father
asked the consent of all of you.”

“Yes, I remember. It was at the beginning of the campaign. But father’s
conduct seemed to me an excess of punctiliousness. These money matters
are quite strange and indifferent to me.”

“Paule was consulted, too.”

“There was our name,” said Paule, “and our honor.”

“Your marriage portion was involved, my child.... After his brother’s
tragic end,” the mother went on, “your father was so affected that
he never recovered his gaiety. But his energy and capacity for work
were doubled. When the epidemic broke out at Cognin he did not take
sufficient care of himself. He was the last to be attacked by the
disease, and at a time when he was exhausted and worn out. From the
first he knew that he was lost, but he never admitted it. I understood
at the last. He studied the progress of his illness himself. One day he
said to me, ‘Don’t be unhappy, God will help you.’ ‘He will help us,’ I
said. He made no reply. He thought of his death fearlessly. He died in
our arms, conscious to the last.”

“Only I was not there,” said Marcel.

“There at the bedside were Étienne, just back from Tonkin, François,
Paule, and Étienne’s fiancée, too, Louise Saudet.”

“Where was Marguerite?”

“She could not come,” answered Madame Guibert sadly, but with no
bitterness in her voice. “They would not allow her. She belongs to God.
We have not seen her since she entered the convent.”

All three were silent, lost in memories. The thought of death was in
their hearts, but all about them the world of living things vibrated in
the sunshine. A leaf already shrivelled, forerunner of autumn, dropped
from a branch and floated slowly down through the warm air. Paule
pointed a finger at it, calling her brother’s attention. To Marcel,
plunged in sorrowful reflection, it seemed a symbol.

“It has lived to the summer. Others go in the springtime,” he said.

He was thinking of the premature end of his sister Thérèse, and of
death which had threatened him more than once. But soon he shook oil
this gloomy foreboding. “Short or long,” he exclaimed, “life must be
lived with full courage. That was father’s way. His memory comforts me;
it doesn’t dishearten me.”

“And Étienne left soon after for Tonkin again?” he continued.

“Yes,” said Madame Guibert. “You remember his first trip with the
Lyons Exploration Company’s mission? He was struck by the wealth of
the mines and the soil there, and told us also of the wild beauty of
the country. He has settled with his wife at Along Bay. Isn’t that the
name, Paule?”

The girl assented, and her mother went on:

“He is in charge of the coal-mines there. At the same time he is quite
a farmer, and is growing rice and tomatoes. François has gone out to
him, and also your cousin Charles, Marc’s son. They are doing well,
with the blessing of God. Étienne helps us to live.”

“Was his wife quite willing to go?”

“Louise is as brave as she is quiet. They sailed eight days after their
wedding. They have a boy now. I have never seen him, but yet I love
him.”

“When Louise was married,” Paule added, “there was quite an outcry
at Chambéry. All the women pitied her mother. ‘How can you let your
daughter go?’ they asked, and they accused her of an unpardonable lack
of affection. Madame Saudet saw that Louise was happy, and that was
enough for her. The others only thought about themselves and their own
peace of mind. As M. Dulaurens says, ‘calm is the all-important thing.’”

A name casually introduced into a conversation often seems to attract
the person mentioned. Such chance coincidences have passed into a
proverb. A carriage at this moment was passing through the open gate
into the chestnut avenue, and Paule recognised the Dulaurens livery.

“They had quite given us up,” observed Madame Guibert, turning very
red. Brave as she was in her attitude towards life, she was timid
towards society.

“It is on account of our hero,” said Paule with a mocking glance at her
brother.

But they all rose and went to meet the visitors. The carriage had
already emerged from the avenue and was crushing the gravel of the
courtyard. Madame Dulaurens was the first to get out and began at once
with an allusion to the Captain. She greeted Madame Guibert and said:

“How proud you must be to have such a son!”

Madame Dulaurens was by birth a De Vélincourt and never forgot the
fact. On the strength of this she looked upon all her actions as
great condescensions, and even deigned to bestow a kind of benevolent
patronage on those meritorious exploits which it should be the
privilege of the aristocracy to perform; or, if not, the aristocracy
could at least claim the credit for them, by applauding them
enthusiastically.

Hidden behind his wife, M. Dulaurens was bowing with unnecessary
frequency. He was dressed in grey from head to foot. Instinctively he
had found the right protective coloring for himself. He lived in a
state of timid admiration of the woman who, despite his lowly origin,
on account of his great fortune, had married him, and who gave him to
understand on every possible occasion the extent of her sacrifice. This
marriage, the foundation alike of his self-respect and his political
opinions, had endowed him with a deep respect for the nobility, of whom
the type to him was his wife’s handsome person, stately and massive,
commanding of feature, imperious and with a voice both authoritative
and disagreeable. Alice stepped out last. She was wearing a pale blue
dress, the delicate shade of which suited her very well. She came
forward with a languid grace, which suggested that with her beauty
frail health was combined. Marcel had eyes henceforward for no one
but the girl. There was no pleasure expressed in his replies to the
compliments heaped upon him, against which indeed his modesty and his
soldierly sense of honor revolted.

There was no doubt that this visit was paid to him, and that he was
the aim and object of it. Although she treated Madame Guibert and
Paule with politeness and even with kindness--with a haughty and
condescending kindness which did not deceive the daughter, who was
more acute, or better versed in the ways of the world, than her
mother--still it was to Marcel that Madame Dulaurens, _née_ de
Vélincourt, kept turning, as if she desired to capture for herself his
new-born celebrity and bear him away in the carriage with her.

Finally she spoke out quite frankly: “Well, young man, you have been
home several days and you are never seen anywhere. One would think you
were in hiding. That is not like you, as the enemy well knows.”

“The enemy” was a conveniently vague name for the distant tribes whose
complicated names she could not trouble to keep in her memory.

M. Dulaurens, who had a sincere admiration for action and courage in
other people, hastened to emphasize his wife’s allusion. “Yes, it was
a hard campaign,” he said. “The Government’s lack of foresight.... You
had few calm moments.”

Paule with difficulty suppressed a hearty laugh as she heard the fatal
adjective. So often was the word “calm” on M. Dulaurens’s lips that he
had been nicknamed Sir Calm by those who tried to find a single phrase
to express both his aristocratic pretensions and his love of peace.

“All our friends wish to make your acquaintance,” his wife continued.
“Please make my house your own, if you care to come.” And then, as
though suddenly noticing Paule’s presence, she added, “With your
sister, of course.”

They would put up with the sister for the sake of entertaining the
brother. The slight pause had shown how the case stood. It was Paule
who replied:

“Thank you very much, Madame Dulaurens, but we are still in mourning.”

“Oh, only half-mourning! It is eighteen months now.” She turned again
to the Captain. “We are going on Sunday to the Battle of Flowers at
Aix. Do come with us. It will be an excuse for an excursion. And in the
evening we are to dine at the Club with a few friends, quite a small
party. You will meet some comrades there--Count de Marthenay, who is in
the dragoons, and Lieutenant Berlier, your friend, is he not? You have
heard that they are talking of his marriage with Isabelle Orlandi, the
beauty.”

She gave out the falsehood, which she had invented on the spur of the
moment, for the purpose of wounding the proud Paule who dared to cross
her wishes. Woman can see, it is hard to say how, by some method of
divination of which both the desire to please and the desire to injure
make her mistress, those affinities which cause the hearts, souls, and
bodies of men and women to seek and find one another. How excellent a
plan it is, for instance, to make a dinner-party go off well by placing
the guests according to one’s ideas of their sympathies--the very way,
perhaps to bring those sympathies into being. Again, the evil-speaking
that there is in the world bears witness to remarkable intuition and
marvellous powers of analysis. In the majority of cases the libel rests
on no positive evidence, and yet there is all the appearance of truth.
The persons concerned are sketched with a natural touch, cruelly of
course, but always with due regard to probability.

Madame Dulaurens gained nothing tangible by the exercise of her
inventive faculty, for the young girl gave no sign; whether it was
because she had learnt self-restraint so early or because the news was
really indifferent to her.

“Then we can count on you?” she demanded, pretending to be waiting for
the answer from Marcel’s own lips.

Alice glanced at the young officer with her eyes pale as the Savoy
skies; while Paule also had her eye on him, but her look was serious.
He understood perfectly that Madame Dulaurens was trying to separate
him from his sister; and, listening to the guidance of that family
loyalty which Dr. Guibert had instilled into each of his children, he
refused the invitation.

“Thank you, Madame, but my homecoming has revived so many recent
sorrows that I do not wish to leave Le Maupas.”

There was a flash of joy in the dark eyes, while long quivering lashes
veiled the downcast blue ones.

“He is in need of rest,” put in Madame Guibert.

Alice was looking over the graveled courtyard. She spoke now with a
slight blush.

“It was your father who cured me. Once you used to come to La Chênaie
very often. Paule was my dearest friend. You must not give us up.”

When at last she raised her pale blue eyes she met Marcel’s glance and
smiled. Then she blushed again, for her color was influenced by the
secret workings of her heart.

“They shall certainly call upon you, Mademoiselle Dulaurens,” said
Madame Guibert, rather surprised at Paule’s silence.

“Mademoiselle Dulaurens! You used to call me Alice!”

“A long time ago,” said the old lady. “You were a little girl then.”

“Am I not so now? At least, not very big,” Alice replied.

Madame Dulaurens could ill support the failure of her schemes. She
was thinking about the fame of her At Homes. With the help of this
hero from Madagascar she would have been able to crush her rival, the
Baroness de Vittoz, who had captured a gouty explorer engaged in a
course of the waters at Aix. She had satisfied herself of the truth
of Jean Berber’s words. Young Captain Guibert’s career, she found,
had been most brilliant. His resolution and bravery were greatly
responsible for the success of the expedition. Honorable mention for
gallantry, the Legion of Honour, another stripe, all bore witness
to his deserts. He was a lion to be proud of. And celebrity of this
kind was more alluring to the militant Madame Dulaurens than that of
literary men or scientists. Besides, was not a spur wanted to encourage
the languid pretensions of the Count de Marthenay to Alice’s hand?

“I cannot accept a refusal,” she said, as she gave the signal for
departure. “We shall expect you at Aix on Sunday.” And then, returning
mechanically to her opening remark to Madame Guibert, she said to
her, in honeyed tones which were a very inapt expression of her soul,
“Madame, every mother envies you your son.”

Alice was particularly gracious to Paule as she said good-bye. But
Paule did not unbend. When the carriage had driven away Marcel stood
looking across the deserted courtyard. So lost in thought was he that
he did not notice his sister gazing at him with an expression of
mingled sadness and affection.

“What are you thinking of?” she asked.

He turned round and gave a rather melancholy smile, as though aware of
his own weakness. “We must go and see them, mustn’t we?” he said.

He was surprised at the effect of his question, for Paule’s face
clouded and her eyes were veiled. “So you already find us insufficient
for you?” she murmured.

She mastered herself quickly and added determinedly. “I at least shall
not go. I was not asked.”

“Yes, you were,” said Marcel.

“Yes, as an afterthought, and Madame Dulaurens made me feel that.”

“My darling Paule, you know that I shall not go without you.”

“Well, then, don’t let us go, will you? Let us stay here. Mother and I
love you so much. We are so happy to have you with us and to look after
you. Stay with us! The house has been silent as the grave so long, but
you have brought the sunshine back to it.”

Madame Guibert joined in, “Marcel, stay with us.”

Marcel’s brow darkened. He did not care to feel that he was deprived
of freedom even by his nearest and dearest, and above all he was very
much out of sympathy with himself. He had come home quite determined
to shut himself up at Le Maupas, to plunge himself in the fragrance of
his native air and the memories of those whom he had lost, and also to
restore a little happiness to his mother and sister--and now it had
taken but one visit from a mere girl to upset all his ideas and to
shatter his pride and his strength of will.

The gentle pleading of mother and sister left him silent. But Paule
could not bear to see her brother sad for long. “Marcel,” she said,
“you must go to La Chênaie. But I cannot go with you. I have nothing to
wear.”

Marcel’s reply came too quickly and betrayed the vehemence of his
desire.

“I will buy you some clothes, dear. I have saved some money.”

“But you have helped so often,” asserted Madame Guibert, with a loving
glance at her son, whose close presence she did not even yet seem to
realise.

Late in the evening, while Madame Guibert was slowly making her
invariable round to see that the house was safely locked up, Paule,
sitting in the drawing-room with Marcel saw him lost in thought again.
She went up to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

“Are you dreaming of the fair Alice?” she asked.

So kind was her tone that he could only smile, as he denied his
weakness. But immediately afterwards he admitted the truth, adding,
“She certainly is fair, isn’t she? Is she a friend of yours?”

“We were at the Sacred Heart Convent together. She is the same age
as I, perhaps a little younger. At the Convent she was like a little
sister in her affection for me. She is sweet, gentle, and timid, and
likes to be led rather than to lead.”

“A very good thing in a woman,” said Marcel approvingly.

He had no hesitancy in admitting the superiority of his own sex.

Paule stroked her brother’s forehead with her soft hand.

“Alice is not the right wife for you,” she said.

“I never thought of marrying her,” was his brusque answer.

But his sister did not abandon her purpose. “She is deficient in
courage,” she said. “And besides we are not in the same set.”

“Not in the same set! Because the Dulaurenses have more money than
we have? In France, thank God, it is not yet the case that wealth
determines social position.”

Paule was sorry she had provoked this outburst. “That is not what I
meant to say,” she explained. “The people we are speaking of have
a totally different outlook on life. They make a show and cannot
distinguish between worthless things and those of importance. I don’t
know how to make it clear to you, but I did not wish to make you
cross.”

“Are you going to preach to me about the ways of the world?” asked her
brother. “Before you have even seen it you pretend to judge it!”

Paule was hurt by the tone of his voice and turned away. Pouring out
all the pent-up bitterness of her heart, she cried: “Do you think I
cannot see behind the outward smile and the lie on the lips? These
people hate us and would like to treat us with contempt. They run after
you--you only--just to flatter their own vanity, and they want to have
nothing to do with mother and me; we are only two poor women. But Alice
is intended for Count de Marthenay, not for you!”

Even without its closing sentence this indignant speech would have
had its effect. What Paule told him now bluntly, Marcel had already
gathered, though not in so clear a fashion. His pride and the affection
which he had for his mother and sister would have been a check upon
him. But the end of Paule’s speech blotted out all that went before.
The very thought of this drawing-room soldier, who had come so
unexpectedly across his path, held up to him as a rival sure of victory
over him, roused all his instincts as a fighter and a conqueror. He was
jealous before he was even in love.




                              CHAPTER III

                         THE BATTLE OF FLOWERS


“Here they come, here they come!” shouted Jean Berlier, pointing to the
end of the race-course.

The course at Marlioz is less than two miles from Aix-les-Bains, on the
road to Chambéry. The view from the stands, which occupy one of the
slopes facing Mont Revard is fine and picturesque. Beyond a foreground
of green fields, separated by screens of poplar-trees, the eyes light
suddenly on the craggy escarpments of the mountain-chain, resembling
some old fortress. By day there is little grace or beauty in the scene,
but at eventide the setting sun lends to it a wonderful attractiveness.

“Here they come,” repeated Isabelle Orlandi, clapping her hands.

The flower-decked carriages had indeed reached the edge of the green
sward, ready to file past the stands filled with a brilliant crowd.
The spectators stamped enthusiastically and, swarming about like a
lot of mad people or a hive of bees, tore flowers from the baskets
of the passing vendors, spread their ammunition in front of them,
and preluded the coming battle with the excited and useless shouts of
soldiers on the point of assault. Under the light of a cloudless sky
the fairy-like procession advanced, radiant in the sunshine. From afar
all that was to be seen of it was a succession of bright patches and at
intervals the rapid flashes reflected from the polished harness of the
horses and the dazzling carriage-wheels as they caught the sun’s rays.
It grew bigger and bigger, and outlined against the golden horizon, it
brought to mind in its splendor and richness the procession of the Magi
painted by some Venetian artist who adored color.

The Dulaurens family and their party filled the first row of the grand
stand, Jean Berlier next to Isabelle, Marcel Guibert between Madame
Dulaurens and Alice. Paule had refused to come with her brother, who
sat quite silent, thinking of the sad faces of the women at home and
regretting the peace and sweetness of Le Maupas, while beginning to
experience the first humiliating inner symptoms of love.

The band began to play dance music, and to the strains of its light
rhythm, almost drowned by laughter and shouting, the battle opened.
Late arrivals, hurrying across the race course eager to take part in
the fun, were mingled in a distracted mass of gay parasols and dresses
on the lawn.

It was at the little ones that the first bouquets were thrown, gently
tossed by delicate hands. The children opened the flowery procession
like harbingers of spring, delicious buds of humanity. Rosy babies
with bare arms, riding donkeys which carried them triumphantly in big
red baskets; small sailor boys proudly wielding their pasteboard oars
in long canoes decked with reeds, drawn by Arab horses whose tails
and flowing manes served as angry waves; tiny girls dressed in pink,
peeping out from green nests like wonderful birds; all this little
company, guarded by an escort of careful nurses, was mad with applause
and sunshine, with music and gaiety. It was like the youthful Bacchus
in his triumph.

Slowly the carriages following them came up one after another and took
their part in the gentle strife. They bore the very grace of the earth,
the beauty of women and the scent of flowers. The soul of the plundered
gardens still pervaded these moving flower-beds. English dog-carts,
tilburies, victorias, phaetons, landaus, all were smothered in flowers
of a thousand hues--heavy moon-daisies, purple as an autumn sunset;
while marguerites, the lover’s fortune-teller; gladioles with their
red bells merrily a-ring; cyclamens the color of the lees of wine, the
rare and precious jewels of Mont Revard’s crown; hydrangeas with their
pink and pale blue globes; orchids of varying hue, splendid in their
triumphant leaflessness, or still more glorious in a setting of exotic
palm-branches or of red forest-heather, whose tiny branches are so
slender and sensitive that the heat of the day is sufficient to stir
them.

Half outstretched among these sumptuous spoils of the ransacked
gardens, the young women of the procession smiled in quiet confidence.
They relied on the pleasure stirred by their irreproachable forms
to complete their own success in the contest against the beautiful
blossoms of mother earth. For they knew full well that they themselves
were the sovereign flowers, more seductive and intoxicating than all
others, since they could supplement the still unconscious grace of
nature with the harmony of motion and the wonder of the intelligent
mind. On the splendid, supple stem of a woman’s perfect form, is not
the face set as though it were the divine calyx of beauty?

The enthusiasm of the crowd made no distinction between the charm of
earth and the charm of woman. The incessant stream of flying bouquets
was a link between the occupants of the stands and the beauties of
the procession, who bent before the tributes paid to them and, amid
the perfume that invaded earth and air alike, made their wondrous
progress over a carpet of flowers, under a rain of flowers. The popular
excitement grew still greater as the spectators saw the Allegory of
Summer approaching. On a chariot with golden wheels drawn by white
horses, ears of wheat were bound in sheaves whose gold was enhanced
by the red and blue of the poppies and cornflowers, the rubies and
sapphires of the fields. Young girls, whose flowing robes were the
color of straw, whose unbound hair streamed in fair waves, veritable
types of the supple maidens of Botticelli’s Primavera, symbolised, like
the ripe grain itself, prosperity and happiness.

“Bravo!” cried the crowd, designating this golden car to the jury
for the first prize. Isabelle Orlandi and Jean Berlier emptied their
baskets with joyful gaiety. The girl was wearing a white dress, and
her bodice, half covered by a bolero, was trimmed with pleated satin
of the color of mother-of-pearl. Pleasure intoxicated her, and her
flushed brown cheeks betrayed her quickened pulses. The two young
people reserved their hardest shots for the arrival of a few ancient
crones who were not afraid to dishonor this procession of youth by
their presence. They are to be met with at all fashionable promenades
at Nice, at Monte Carlo, at Aix. In fact, they are apparently the same
at all these functions. They try to forget or to cheat death, and their
very faces adjure us to make the best of life or remind us of the
threats of time. One of them was at last hit, and kept on her hat and
head-dress with difficulty under the shocks of the missiles. Isabelle
and Jean could no longer restrain their laughter.

Beside Alice Dulaurens, whose mauve dress trimmed with white lace
enhanced her ethereal grace, Marcel felt his will weakening and his
melancholy disappearing. A cloud of colors and scents surrounded and
enervated him. He could see nothing but flowers on the path of his
future life. At intervals, however, a strange vision would come back to
his memory, some vivid landscape of his childhood, or some dark valley
in the Colonies, and he regretted these pictures of his old enthusiasms
which he tried in vain to keep fresh. But why seek to bring back the
past when the present had so many charms? He gazed, not without that
sadness which accompanies a growing desire, at the dazzling white neck
of the girl as she bent forward to get a better view of the course of
her awkwardly thrown bouquet and he could not but admire the bloom of
her pale skin.

Alice turned to her companion, whose silence troubled her, and one look
from her blue eyes was purification to the young man’s thoughts. With
her little ungloved hand she pointed to the basket which was rapidly
emptying itself.

“Here are some flowers,” she cried. “Aren’t you going to throw any?”

She blushed as she uttered these simple words, and her extreme shyness
made her look the lovelier.

The allegorical chariot of Summer passed on, and, following a carriage
covered with vervain and roses, came the regimental break of the
dragoons quartered at Chambéry, artistically decorated with brilliant
sunflowers and big bunches of jonquils. Among the officers in uniform
the only one standing was Lieutenant de Marthenay, whose elegance was
of the rather cumbersome kind which evidences the passing of youth.
He carried a bouquet of rare and lovely orchids. It was very evident
that he was looking for someone on the stands. When he saw Mademoiselle
Dulaurens, he smiled, bowed, and made as if he would throw the bouquet
to her. This bold impertinence, drawing the public gaze upon the young
girl, vexed Marcel Guibert, who dived into Alice’s basket and with a
very efficacious zeal was the first to begin the fight with his rival.
His aim was well-calculated, but not so the strength. He struck the
Dragoon full in the face, thereby extinguishing the bright smile. De
Marthenay, taken aback, let the precious orchids fall on the ground
where they were picked up at once by a watchful collector of flowers.

Furious at this, he swept the stand with his glance, only to see
Isabelle Orlandi, who was clapping her hands and crying:

“Well hit! Three cheers for the Tirailleurs!”

Jean Berlier backed her up, amused at her exuberant spirits. De
Marthenay, however, paid no attention to their raillery. At last he
noticed Marcel Guibert’s strong, contemptuous face a little behind
Alice. But while his anger and malice grew stronger and stronger, the
Dragoon’s chariot passed on.

At every turn which brought him in front of the Dulaurens party, he
saw Alice, forgetful of the battle, talking to his rival; she seemed a
changed, absorbed, and less retiring Alice. And, every time, Isabelle
and her admirer took a spiteful joy in interrupting his observations by
incessantly bombarding him. They had the advantage of the position, and
they kept at it all the afternoon.

In the meantime an unexpected carriage had appeared in the procession.
Entirely decorated with scarlet, copper red, and orange cannas,
flame-like in shape and color, Clément Dulaurens’ motor puffed past
snorting and panting. In the brilliant daylight it looked like a raging
fire.

It was the first motor car allowed to take part in the show, and it
was by no means welcome. Its abominable smell overwhelmed the scent of
the flowers, and the horrible noise which accompanied its quivering
progress brought down upon it the wrath of the crowd, in spite of
indignant protests from some lovers of the sport.

Shouts of “Poisonous monster!” “Go to the ‘devil’” were heard.

“Fire! fire!” cried others at this wizard of the flaming flowers.

In the face of all this outcry, the young man did not try to force
public favor. He was clever enough to leave the procession and on
reaching the deserted race-course he let his swift obedient machine
go. Across the lawn he went at full speed in his flaming car like a
dazzling rocket and disappeared in the direction of the sun, but not
too soon to hear the far-off cheers which at last greeted the matchless
power of the machine and its meteor-like beauty.

Either from satiety or fatigue the battle was dying down. In vain the
flower-sellers offered their flowers at a reduction. Cradled on their
donkeys, the happy babies were the only ones who took much interest in
the show. Foreseeing that people would soon be tired of it the jury
began to distribute the prizes.

The sun was already setting on the Marlioz plain. Delicate shades of
pink, violet, gold, and mauve were dusted over the horizon like some
impalpable powder. And as the sun set, keeping to themselves all its
vanishing glory the rocks of Mount Revard spread themselves with a robe
of brilliant red, under which they seemed to quiver with joy as in a
bath of light. As he was leaving the stand after Alice, Marcel stopped
to admire this rapturous display of nature; the girl turned round to
call him and wondered at the joy in his face. He had felt in himself a
similar exaltation of all his vital forces.

The Dulaurens and their guests got into the coach awaiting them on the
road and drove back to Aix-les-Bains.

On the evening of the Battle of Flowers it is the custom to dine in
the open air, either at the Club or at the Villa, weather permitting.
The restaurants encroach upon the gardens and on the well-worn lawns;
Rows of little tables are set out, where lamps with many colored shades
shine among the trees like scintillating glow-worms.

Armand de Marthenay, who had been asked to dine with the Dulaurenses,
joined the party in the big hall of the Club. They had reserved one
of the favorite and most sheltered tables, at the end of the terrace,
for Alice was sensitive to cold and at nights a fresh breeze blew from
the mountains. The cavalry lieutenant was in a bad humor. He could not
swallow his discomfiture of the afternoon. As soon as he saw Marcel
Guibert he came up to him rashly and remarked:

“You fail to distinguish, my dear sir, between war and play.”

Marcel drew himself up to his full height. Much taller than de
Marthenay, he looked down on him contemptuously and said, “You fail to
distinguish between respect and mere gallantry.”

Hearing the sound of this dialogue and fearing a scene, Madame
Dulaurens came up to them. The title of one and the fame of the other
were equally in her mind, and it suited her vanity to have the two
officers in the party.

De Marthenay, unable to complain of the words addressed to him, tried
to find an excuse for a quarrel, when Isabelle Orlandi came up like a
whirl-wind and saved the compromising situation.

“Come here, Jean, quickly. Here is the dragoon.”

And with the unchecked caprice of a spoilt child she added quickly,
“Show me your face!”

“But, Mademoiselle Orlandi--” protested the lieutenant, growing pale.

“Just for a minute, only just for a minute.”

She pretended to examine his face and said, as though she were
presenting him to the public, “It’s simply wonderful! There’s not a
mark.”

“What do you want of me?” stammered de Marthenay.

The young girl burst out laughing and went on making fun of him.

“You can’t deny it! These colonials can shoot splendidly--You beat them
in a cotillion! But in war! Hardly!”

“I don’t understand you--”

“Oh, yes you do! You understand me perfectly. M. Guibert here has
beaten you! We applaud him because, as you know, he is our hero. Now
you are anything but a hero. When your uniform gets wet you talk about
it for a week! Besides, when one really wants to fight, one doesn’t go
into the cavalry!”

Now for a man to extricate himself wittily from the embarrassment
caused by a pretty woman’s jokes is no easy matter, and Lieutenant de
Marthenay was far from being witty. He attacked Marcel Guibert once
more.

“The ladies are your protection, sir!”

But Isabelle Orlandi did not let him go. It was she who answered:

“Oh! he needs no protection to advance him.”

Madame Dulaurens intervened at last:

“Come, Isabelle, you are not considerate.”

The girl lifted her arms heavenwards with a comical gesture:

“One must not strike an officer of the Dragoons,” she said. “Even with
flowers.”

It was a joy to her to humiliate this young man. Before life humbled
her--and she was quite determined to sacrifice everything, including
love itself, to her luxurious ideas--she gave herself up entirely to
the joy of being beautiful, coquettish, and daring.

Clément Dulaurens, arriving at this point, turned the conversation
completely by questioning Marcel about the Malagasy names which
afforded him so much amusement.

“Captain, do tell me, is Antanimbarindra Tsoksoraka a real name? Or is
it just a journalist’s invention?”

“Not at all. It is a village.”

“And Ramazombazaha?”

“He was the chief of the Hovas at the beginning of the war. Our men to
simplify matters called him _Ramasse ton bazar_.”

“There you see,” said Clément, “I’m the only one able to talk about the
Madagascar expedition with you in technical terms. And I know some even
more complicated names than these.”

During the whole scene Alice had kept nervously silent.

They sat down to dinner, and soon the little skirmish was forgotten in
the general merriment which followed a day spent in the open air and in
physical exercise.

Isabelle, less aggressive now, amused everybody including even her
enemy. Alice, seated between Marcel and Armand de Marthenay, tried
to make herself agreeable to both of them, though showing as usual
considerable reserve. When they left the table she forgot the bouquet
of cyclamen, which she had worn in her belt in the afternoon. Marcel
promptly seized it. The girl noticed this.

“Will you give it to me?” he asked, but his voice was scarcely that of
a suppliant. However, he added, “You thought so little of it that you
left it behind and the flowers are quite faded already.”

She did not answer, but she smiled and blushed. In her smile he read
her preference.

Marcel left first, to get back to Le Maupas early and not to cause his
mother needless worry. The night was so lovely that, getting out at the
station at Chambéry about 10 o’clock, he thought he would walk home. It
was but two miles of a flat country along an avenue of plane-trees and
up a little wooded hill.

He walked quickly, inhaling from time to time the still fresh scent of
the cyclamens. As he neared Le Maupas in the twofold darkness of the
night and the trees he could see just a few stars, which shone through
the leaves, their brightness augmented by the dark dome of the heavens.
Greedily he breathed the fresh, balmy air. He inflated his chest and
felt a new thrill through his whole being.

Was he in love? He did not know yet. But the sight of a young girl had
been enough to revive all his youthful fire.

A memory suddenly came to him. He felt that he was transported back
to Algiers some years ago. It was one of those never-to-be-forgotten
nights of the East, with their dark skies, their warm, soft breezes.
Alone on horseback he was riding slowly through the bush, when suddenly
his horse stopped. Round him he could see only the silhouettes of a
few stunted shrubs. Neither pats nor spurs had any effect; the animal
refused to move and his body trembled. Was there some living thing in
the shadow beside them? In the dead silence of the dark and deserted
plain some invisible presence made itself felt. But even in the face
of this mysterious peril, from which there was no escape, he did not
feel afraid. On the contrary, he felt conscious of all his strength and
energy.

With a violent effort he forced his horse forward until it galloped
away into the darkness. And he never knew if the animal had shuddered
at some imaginary fear or if they really had passed within reach of
death....

Why should this memory come back to him at this hour? He lived through
the same strange feelings of that night of long ago. As then, he
guessed at an unknown danger; he could not tell if it were a future of
joy or of sorrow that was awaiting him. But he felt all his power now
as he did then. He put his hand to his breast, inhaled deep breaths of
the soft, fragrant night air, and drew himself up to his full height;
then intoxicated with hope and pride he began to run.

When he stopped, the inexplicable sense of danger which had visited him
had not vanished; it was alive within him.

In the wood the soft night sighed sadly.... And later Marcel had reason
to remember this hour when he had run through the shadows towards
something intoxicating and to be feared--which was love.




                              CHAPTER IV

                        A MORNING AT LA CHÊNAIE


“I’ve come to take away your children,” said Jean Berlier to Madame
Guibert after he had shaken hands with her.

“Don’t take them from me, please,” she answered softly. And she smiled
her delicate sweet smile. The young man had surprised her seated under
the chestnut trees at work, near the front of the old house. She had
put on her spectacles to see the stitches of her needlework. Soon she
called to Marcel and Paule, who were walking about in the garden at a
little distance. And when they were coming down the weed-grown path she
inquired almost timidly:

“Are you going to La Chênaie?”

“Yes,” answered Jean, “for a game of croquet or tennis.”

Then, as if he regretted his words, he added:

“If you like, Madame, I will say no more about it.”

“Oh, no. Marcel needs diversion and exercise--he has been used to an
active life. And my little Paule has lived too long with her old
mother.”

She never gives a thought to herself and her loneliness.

Madame Guibert always welcomed Jean almost maternally. When quite a
little child he had played at Le Maupas as one of her own. He was
the only son of a barrister, who was the glory of the Chambéry bar.
An orphan at an early age, Jean had been brought up by rather an
eccentric, original old uncle, brother to the boy’s mother, who forgot
everybody, even his nephew, in his devotion to his garden. This M.
Loigny lived near the town, on the Cognin road, in a little house
smothered in roses. He cultivated his garden and edited a guide to
the names of roses. Thus every minute of his life was taken up, and
he never quite knew how long it was when Jean was away on duty in the
Algerian Tirailleurs. When he came home every eighteen months on leave,
his uncle immediately told him all about his latest discoveries in the
rose family, thereby thinking he was giving him proofs of the greatest
affection!

When Marcel and Paule appeared in the Avenue, Jean told them that they
were expected at La Chênaie.

“And too,” he said to Marcel, “you owe Madame Dulaurens a call after
the Battle of Flowers, don’t you? This is a good opportunity of paying
it and getting a game of croquet at the same time.”

“That is true,” agreed the captain.

“You will come with us, Mademoiselle Paule?” asked Jean Berlier.

But Paule refused, saying she was in bad humor. Marcel looked at
her sadly, and Jean regarded her with sympathetic curiosity. He
remembered having played long ago in this same courtyard with a child
of overflowing spirits, brighter and jollier than any boy. He now found
in her place a young woman, reserved and proud, even in the company
of playfellows. And yet he could not refrain from admiring her tall,
graceful figure, slight but strong, and her dark eyes from which the
light seemed to flash. He would like to have met on the old terms of
friendship with his little Paule. In the presence of this cold and
beautiful Paule he felt an awkwardness and a vague anxiety that he
dared not analyse.

“Jean,” said Madame Guibert suddenly, “I want to scold you.”

“No, please, don’t scold me,” said the young man, putting on the
grimace of a naughty child.

He was proverbially good-tempered, and the sight of him was enough to
brighten the faces of all who knew him.

“We are your oldest friends, and yet Mademoiselle Dulaurens was the
first to tell us about the most important event in your life!”

“What most important event?” said Jean, in pretended astonishment.

Paule got up and walked towards the house as if she had some very
important duty there.

“Your marriage,” said Madame Guibert.

“My marriage! To whom, in heaven’s name?”

“To Mademoiselle Isabelle Orlandi.”

Madame Guibert, who always meant what she said, had believed the tale
of Madame Dulaurens. But Jean Berlier began to laugh.

“Oh, she was talking of my little flirtation! But I’m sure you don’t
know the meaning of the English word flirtation.”

Paule went slowly up the steps. She had laid her hand upon her breast
as if she were breathing with difficulty and then she quickened her
step. Passing before the drawing-room mirror she stopped, surprised at
her own beauty. The friendly daylight showed her a more charming face
than she had expected to see. She smiled sadly at her image and her
smile meant to say, “What is the good of being beautiful if you have
no dowry? What is the good of having all this tenderness and devotion
burning in an empty heart like a lamp in a deserted sanctuary.” At
the same time she felt an involuntary consolation at the sight of her
unavailing charm.

Jean’s face wore the serious air of a scientist explaining a problem.

“Flirtation means the love one makes to girls one doesn’t marry,” said
he.

“In French we call that _conter fleurette_,” said Madame Guibert.
“You are wrong, Jean. I am an old woman, so listen to me. The game is
never an equal one. Girls always expect to find a husband. You deceive
their lawful hopes, and you amuse yourself with them at the cost of
their peace of mind and their better feelings.”

The young man listened to this little sermon with a respectful smile.

“I love to hear you talk like that,” he said. “But I see that the
modern girl is a stranger to you.”

“To me too,” said Marcel. “Do you often go to La Chênaie?”

“Yes, I am too active to spend all my days at Villa Rose. My uncle
is always afraid that I shall walk on his flower beds. He lives in a
constant state of alarm, and sighs with relief when he sees the last of
me. But the household at La Chênaie is so interesting.”

“Really?” said Marcel, trying rather ineffectively not to appear
interested.

“It affords a thousand different ways of killing time--which is the
enemy it is most in dread of--and in spite of it all it does sometimes
experience what it is to have nothing to do. Madame Dulaurens bustles
about, sends out her invitations, writes menus or accounts of her
At Homes for the society papers. M. Dulaurens, the ceremonious and
punctilious, arranges his library, which nobody is ever allowed to
disturb, greets his wife’s guests, agrees with his wife’s slightest
word and by his attitude of adoration constantly begs forgiveness of
this thoroughly aristocratic person for his plebeian origin. Young
Clément runs over dogs in his car. Happily he has done nothing worse
until the present time.”

“And Alice?” Madame Guibert asked innocently.

The young man’s answer was full of tact.

“Mademoiselle Alice is waiting for something to happen. It cannot fail
to be pleasant for her.”

“But do you see only the Dulaurenses at La Chênaie?” said Marcel.

“They have their guests too. There is Madame Orlandi, for instance.
Madame Orlandi has come back to the town of her birth to mourn her
lost beauty rather than her husband. She lived in Florence when she
was young and lovely. When her youth departed she retired from society
and from Italy. The loss of her fortune made that necessary. She has
had all the mirrors taken away from her rooms; they are all in her
daughter’s room, it is said. She has none but young and pretty maids
and is covered with jewels as thick as a reliquary. She spends the day
in taking out and putting back these witnesses of her former triumphs.
However, she manages to find time to look after an awful pug called
Pistache, of which she is much fonder than of her daughter.”

“And now we have come to the point,” said Marcel, “after a long way
round!”

“Mademoiselle Isabelle is charming. She knows that she owes it to her
beauty to marry a millionaire. She will not fail to do that. Her mother
and I are both encouraging her.”

“Oh dear!” cried Madame Guibert, who had stopped her work.

“She needs no encouragement,” continued the young man. “These Italians
are very practical. And then Mademoiselle De Songeon, whose thin,
aristocratic, old-maid’s face is for ever to be seen at La Chênaie, is
not the least curious of the lot.”

“I know her,” interrupted Madame Guibert. “She is a saint. She looks
after all kinds of charitable works and spends a precious life in
religious meetings and going on pilgrimages.”

“Say rather in being president and making trips,” suggested Jean. “She
has a love of wandering about and of ruling over others. She gives her
orders and keeps on the move, and pretends to be religiously employed
when in reality she uses religion as a means of gratifying her twofold
passion. The story goes that she extorts money from her debtors like
a Jew so that she may pay her duties to God in the most fashionable
sanctuaries.”

Madame Guibert tried to stop him.

“My dear Jean,” she cried, “what are you talking about? You will make
us believe that you are very unkind.”

“It is only unkind gossip,” said the young man. “Forgive me, I spoke
too freely, as I should to my family if I had one.”

And hastening to cover the regret he expressed in his last words, he
added:

“Here I feel happy. I came here as a little child. But please don’t
talk to me of Mademoiselle de Songeon. A saint, indeed, is she? Oh, no!
Now you, Madame Guibert, _are_ one.”

Madame Guibert, in spite of her age, could never hear herself praised
without blushing. Her courage was only of the inward kind. She
protested:

“Jean, what are you saying? God has spoilt me. That’s all.”

The young man looked with surprise at this elderly woman in mourning,
her face withered with sorrow, her eyes constantly filled with tears,
who, nevertheless, could thank God for her trials. She noticed his
expression.

“Yes, God overwhelmed me with blessings before taking them from me.
And now, if I tremble for my children scattered all over the world,
for _him_--” she pointed to Marcel--“who has been through so many
dangers, how can I help being proud of their courage and their work? Is
not their life my life?”

Jean was moved; he rose and took Madame Guibert’s hand, and kissed it
respectfully.

“You are a saint, I told you you were. When I see you I grow better
and I no longer want to scatter my life to the four winds, I want to
imitate your sons. But I have no mother.”

He saw Paule coming down the steps. She had her hat on and on her face
was an expression of new life.

“Oh, Mademoiselle Paule, you have made up your mind?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is so fine, and Marcel is cross when I stay at
home.”

She kissed her mother and left for La Chênaie with the two young men,
with whose long steps she could hardly keep pace.

The gate of La Chênaie is reached by the uphill road from Chaloux,
which rises above the town of Cognin. An avenue of plane-trees leads
across the park to the villa, which is spacious and trim and has a
view extending as far as the Lake of Bourget, surrounded by mountains
which throw their heavy shadows upon its waters. On this side, lawns
without a tree, laid out as a tennis court and a croquet green, leave
the view unobstructed, while behind the house a wood of venerable oak
trees offers shelter in the summer.

The Dulaurenses were noted for making their guests comfortable and for
leaving them at liberty to amuse themselves. When Paule arrived with
her brother and Jean, they had just finished a game of croquet and a
circle was grouped around Isabelle Orlandi, who was talking in a low
voice and waving her hands.

“And his name is Landeau,” she was just saying.

“Whose name?” asked Jean, as he joined the group of listeners.

“My fiancé’s.”

And the girl burst into a harsh, discordant laugh--almost a shriek. She
gave her hand to the young man.

“How do you do, Jean?”

She called him by his Christian name, on the pretext of having met him
once when he was quite a small boy.

“Here is a red mallet. Let us stop this game. Nobody is interested in
it now. Let us begin again. I shall take you on my side.”

She rearranged the game as she wished and appeared for a minute to be
very absorbed in it. Jean’s ball came to the rescue of hers, which with
a skilful shot she had sent flying into the grass, far away from the
hoops. They made the best use of this privacy for which they had been
wishing.

“Yes,” she said, and he noticed her pallor as she spoke--“I have to
tell you of my coming marriage to a Lyons manufacturer. A business
marriage!”

“My congratulations.”

“Thank you. He has several millions and some prosperous factories.
He has promised my lawyer to make a good settlement. After that, you
understand, it matters very little that he is ugly, in the forties, and
burdened with a ridiculous name.”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t that so?”

They were recalled and scolded for delaying. In vain their partners
tried to revive their interest. It was entirely their fault that their
side lost the game.

Going back to the drawing-room for refreshments, they managed to
precede the many groups slowly making their way up the lawn and went
round the villa. Thus they arrived last. As they were walking Isabelle
suddenly asked her companion:

“Jean, can you understand that one might marry with love in one’s
heart?”

“Love for one’s husband, do you mean?”

“You are joking.”

He was indeed joking, not wishing to understand. But, as at the very
moment he was looking at an ugly slug dragging itself over a rose in
the courtyard, he felt very tenderly and regretfully for Isabelle’s
sacrificed beauty.

“Better to love before than after,” was all he could say in the end.

“Oh, if you love before you love after, too.”

He turned the conversation, for he was struggling against his feelings.
Never had he experienced such a passion for that masterful profile,
those bold eyes, those red and sensual lips, those brilliant teeth, all
that abounding youthful grace.

“Am I not a wizard? I foretold your marriage that evening in the
railway carriage.”

“Yes, my mother has often told me, ‘My dear, after a week all men are
the same--fortune and youth are both fleeting things, but the first
alone can bestow a prize upon the second.’”

“Your mother is a wise woman,” said Jean.

“Everybody is so in Italy. Poetry is only a matter of language with
them.”

Suddenly, with that naturalness which was her greatest charm and which
led her into the most unexpected outbursts, she began to cry. And, as
he stood bewildered and not knowing how to show his concern, she asked
him:

“Why don’t _you_ marry me?”

Confused as he was, he answered, nevertheless, quickly enough.

“I could not take you with me to Africa.”

“You could go in for business. You would make a lot of money. M.
Landeau would help you.” At the thought of the curious rôle that
she was giving M. Landeau she laughed heartily which completely won
the young man. As they threaded the avenue of plane-trees she took
advantage of the deep shadow of a tree to offer her cheek.

“Kiss me to console me!”

Jean was still thrilling at the contact with the fresh young cheek when
Isabelle renewed her attack.

“What a pity!” she said. “Why aren’t you a millionaire?”

“That is what I should like to know,” sighed Jean.

Madame Dulaurens pointed to the vanishing figure of the girl after Jean
and Isabelle had outdistanced the first group whom she was leading to
the drawing-room.

“Instead of blaming her, I quite approve of what she has done. This
marriage shows her great strength of character. After all, she has no
fortune.”

The chorus of rich friends quite agreed with this remark. Encouraged,
she continued, after throwing a careful glance behind her:

“Look at Paule Guibert, on the other hand. She wouldn’t marry M.
Landeau. Not a penny, and such a deadly creature! How can you expect
her ever to marry?”

“Still,” said one lady, “her father sacrificed all his property to save
his brother. It was splendid.”

“To save the name of Guibert? It would have been better if he had saved
his money. Who remembers anything about it now?”

“Forgetfulness is quicker than death,” remarked a sententious male
guest.

Madame Dulaurens went on: “Poor Paule was much admired by Lieutenant
Sinard at a costume ball I gave a few years ago--before the doctor’s
death. He was very serious about it. But he came in for three hundred
thousand francs. Of course, after that, he had quite different ideas.”

“Oh, well, of course,” chimed in the chorus of the faithful, “he could
never again think of her.”

A few steps behind, Madame Orlandi made her way slowly under her heavy
burden of flesh. The critical eye of Mademoiselle de Songeon was upon
her as she panted out her confused account of the benefits of the new
situation.

“My daughter had great difficulty in making up her mind. But M.
Landeau is a man of principles--and, what is not to be despised, of
large fortune.”

The “principles” were introduced to placate the lady president, who
asked, “Has he given up work?”

“Oh, no, he still works. He is a director. He commands thousands of
workmen--a real general!”

“But,” the old maid muttered dryly, “in my time, no one in our set
would have married a business man.”

Jean Berlier and Isabelle, having completed their tour of the villa,
came out from behind the shrubbery. The young man took great pleasure
in baiting Mademoiselle de Songeon, and the last sentence immediately
provoked his intervention.

“That is all changed now, Mademoiselle. It is the misfortune of the
age. Formerly nobility meant doing nothing, nowadays, it is the result
of labor, which is a moral obligation rather than a physical necessity.
The world is upside down; it is the bad people who don’t work now.”

But the Honorary President of the White Cross of Savoy, of the Bread
Club of St. Anthony, and patroness of several workshops, stared at him
haughtily and answered somewhat acidly:

“Those who have kept pigs on earth will keep them in heaven too.”

“Is that from the Gospel?” asked the mocking Jean.

Alice meanwhile had remained behind with Paule and Marcel Guibert. Her
step was rather weary, and the young man asked her if she were tired.

“Here is a bench,” he said. “Do rest awhile.”

“No, thank you. I am all right. Let us go in.”

There was a touch of the imaginary invalid in her charming smile, as
she added:

“It is the burden of these long summer days. Don’t you think they are
very depressing?”

Marcel was astonished.

“I have never given it a thought,” he said. “I love the sun as the
bringer of life. And I love long days, for they seem to lengthen our
time on earth.”

Paule was silent and absent-minded, her eyes turned toward the house.
She recognised a visitor who was ringing at the big gate.

“It is Monsieur de Marthenay,” she said.

Alice’s clear eyes clouded over and the color vanished from her cheeks.
She sat down on the seat which she had just refused and invited Paule
to do the same.

“Stay here with me, dear, please.”

And turning to Marcel gracefully, she said:

“There is no room for you. But I’m sure that you aren’t tired.”

“No, indeed,” he replied. Then, after a pause, “Do you know that absurd
Arab proverb, ‘It is better to be seated than to stand, better to lie
down than to sit, and better to be dead than to lie down?’”

“I did not know it, but I like it,” said Alice.

A profound depression, as unaccountable as a child’s despair, was
visible in her sweet young face. She bent toward the silent Paule.

“I envy you, Paule. You are so strong and splendid. I am so weak. If
you only knew how weak I am! I have no strength at all.”

And with her lovely sad eyes she fixed Marcel as if speaking to him
and asking for his help. Why did she pity herself so? And why did she
shrink from M. de Marthenay?

“At your age,” Marcel said, “how can one disbelieve in happiness?”

Instead of these commonplace words he thirsted to give her the comfort
of his own strength. And Paule, a prey at this moment to doubt and
bitterness, still kept silence in disdainful astonishment at being
envied by this friend whose life had been spared so much and who could
arrange her fate according to her own will.

The sun had gone down behind Mount Lépine. But before their eyes the
evening sky was glorious in a golden veil whose reflection fell
languidly on the waters of Lake Bourget. Le Revard and the Mont du
Chat, whose summits still shone in the light, tried desperately to
catch the last of the day of which their lofty heights had given them
so large a share. And the plain stretched out in a haze of blue and
pink, which spread over all things like a fall of flower-petals and
effaced all distinctions of shape and space.

“Look,” said Paule at last, pointing to the skyline.

The two girls rose at once to catch the effect of the sunset on the
lake to better advantage. Marcel had eyes for Alice only, in her white
robe, looking like a tall, graceful lily, her pure profile outlined
against the gold of the sky like the haloed angels of the pious
Quatrocentist painters. She turned slowly towards him, her long lashes
quivering over her dazzled eyes, and smiled at him gently as she said:

“I can look no longer. The sun hurts my eyes.”

Paule thought of the time when she and her brothers loved to stare at
the sun itself without lowering their eyelids. But Marcel, stirred in
spite of himself by the sight of so fragile a beauty, felt his heart
beat furiously, and was full of those longings for sacrifice which
accompany the dawn of love.

“Alice,” came the voice of Madame Dulaurens, “you must not stay out in
the cold air.”

A little later Marcel and Paule left. They got back to Le Maupas by a
path half hidden under the grass which borders the Forezan ravine and
crosses a wood of beech and birch before joining the Vimines road.
Through the foliage an occasional glimpse could be caught of a pink and
mauve sky, a sky of happy omen. And yet the brother and sister were
silent, lost in their own thoughts.

“You weren’t bored, Paule, were you?” asked Marcel at last.

“I? No, I went to La Chênaie to please you. Are you pleased?”

He did not answer at once. Without looking at Paule, whose sadness
he had not noticed owing to his own absorption, he began to tell his
secret in the darkness of the woods.

“If I asked her to marry me, what would you say?”

Paule had expected this confidence, and yet she trembled. Her dark eyes
were fixed on the path, strewn now with the dark leaves of other years,
and bathed in the violet evening light. She answered almost harshly:

“Her parents will refuse.”

“Why?” asked he, and love gave place for a moment to pride.

“Because you haven’t a title.”

“But neither have they. And besides, what does that matter nowadays?”

“Oh, their set retains its prejudices.”

“But if she wishes it herself?”

“She has no will of her own.”

“And if she loves me?”

“She will cry,” said Paule.

It was her own despair, which nobody must know, which she must crush in
silence and mystery, that made her give these cruel answers. Marcel,
his sensitive feelings hurt, lengthened his steps as he climbed the
hill and drew himself up as straight as a young oak-tree. But Paule at
last, choking down all thought of self, hastened to catch up with him
and took his hand in hers. She spoke in a voice quivering with emotion.

“Listen, Marcel, I spoke hastily just now. I was in bad humor. Forgive
me, I was wrong. Yes, I know that I was wrong. I saw to-day that she
liked you. And her mother lavishes favors and kindnesses upon you.”

Marcel listened to her, but his face was still melancholy.

Paule went on. “You see, since father died there have been so many
changes that my character has become embittered, no doubt. I cannot
bear people who belittle everything we admire and make fun of all
our enthusiasms. You saw that Isabelle Orlandi? But if Alice became
your wife, how quickly she would change! She is so good, so sweet and
gentle. And then she is so lovely.”

“Yes,” he agreed sadly. “She is lovely.”

It grew darker in the woods. The slim trunks of the birches and beeches
mingled with the blackness of their foliage. But beyond the trees the
brother and sister emerged again into the lingering summer twilight
which refused to give place to night.

As they came in sight of Le Maupas, Marcel stopped short.

“No, you are not wrong. But speak to Alice. Explain to her my past, my
future, all that is my pride--my only fortune. I would carry her off to
Algiers, which is an enchanted town.”

She understood and, looking tenderly at her brother, said:

“Ah, if you love her, that’s different. I will do as you wish.”

“Speak to her to-morrow,” he insisted. “We are going to breakfast at La
Chênaie with Mademoiselle Orlandi’s fiancé.”

“To-morrow? So soon?” was all she said. The invitation had not been
given to her personally. But she gave no thought to this discourtesy,
and added:

“Wouldn’t it be better to speak to her parents?”

“No,” he answered decidedly, “I don’t want our mother to run the risk
of taking a useless step.”

And as they passed through the gate she murmured:

“I want you to be happy!”

He smiled, but not at all confidently.

“Don’t say anything to Mother yet. She doesn’t like that set. Neither
do I.” Still he had to admit his weakness at the end.

“But I do love _her_!” he concluded.




                               CHAPTER V

                            ALICE’S SECRET


A plebeian husband and a woman of the aristocracy have not yet come to
be regarded in French provincial life as making a good match. They are
called “half bloods,” and they cannot make any pretensions to race.
They are the object of ridicule when the husband allows the wife to
dwell incessantly on her origin, in order to conceal the humbleness of
his own, and even to have her maiden name added on her visiting cards.

M. Dulaurens had learnt through his home life to appreciate the force
of aristocratic prejudice. His newly acquired royalism was extreme and
uncompromising. All titles dazzled him, even those distributed by the
cynical republic of San Marino in return for cash; but even to these
latter, in his humility, he did not dare to aspire. This deferential
attitude did not entirely console Madame Dulaurens for having married
beneath her; but at least she could thus gratify her taste for ruling.

Even as she ruled her husband and her household, so too she ruled her
children, and more especially Alice. She belonged to that order of
mothers who confuse their own happiness with that of their daughters,
and are quite sincere in thinking that they are working for the
latter when in reality they are working only for the former. Her
maternal affection was of the absorbing character of passion itself
and satisfied the lack in her life which marriage had been unable to
supply. That morning she was carefully mapping out the future of Alice,
to whom she had, just as a matter of form, submitted M. de Marthenay’s
proposal. But above all she was taken up with the luncheon party which
she was giving in honor of Isabelle Orlandi’s engagement. She got up
abruptly from her armchair every now and then to give some order. In
the process she forgot to notice Alice or to obtain her consent. She
was like one of those conquerors who cannot conceive of any obstacle to
their plans. Her treatment, indeed, of the eminently serious subject
was somewhat free and easy--for she had long had it in mind, and looked
upon it already as one of those family compacts which are natural and,
so to speak, inevitable.

Coming back for the third time from the kitchen, which she did deign
to visit, she enumerated all the advantages of this match. “His is a
very old and perfectly genuine title. Good connections. Not much money
certainly, but our aristocrats are not shop-keepers. And Armand is
very good-looking.”

There was a knock at the door, and the frightened butler came in with
uplifted hands.

“Madame, I am sorry to have to tell Madame that the ice cream is not
hardening in the freezer!”

“Put more ice and some more salt into it then,” said Madame Dulaurens
shortly, continuing as soon as the door was shut:

“And then, my dear girl, I shall be able to keep you near me. You know,
I absolutely insisted on that. I made that an essential condition of
your acceptance. Armand has promised me never to leave Chambéry. If
some day he is appointed to another place, he would give up his post
and that would settle it. He has agreed to that, so we shall never be
separated.” She was prepared to give way to tears at this juncture,
when there was another knock.

“Come in,” she said impatiently.

It was the gardener bringing in flowers for the table, to receive her
compliments.

“Alice, do look at these carnations,” said Madame Dulaurens Hurriedly,
“and the jessamine and roses. They are very nice, Pierre, thank you.”

At last she glanced at her daughter. Alice’s silence surprised her.
The girl was deathly pale and kept her eyes cast to the ground. When
she raised them she met her mother’s gaze and, unable to bear it any
longer, burst into tears. Madame Dulaurens took her in her arms.

“Dearest, what is the matter?” she said.

“I don’t know. Why do you want to marry me off so soon? I am quite
happy. Keep me here still, mother darling.”

Madame Dulaurens stroked the girl’s head and her cheeks as she used to
do when Alice was a child.

“But I am not going to lose you, my sweet. Have I not explained that
you are not going to leave me?” she added with a smile, though still
rather anxiously:

“Think what a lovely Countess of Marthenay you will make, dear! And
don’t you like the Count?”

“Oh, I don’t know!”

It was her frightened way of refusing, Madame Dulaurens had a
presentiment of it.

“We will fix the wedding for any day you choose,” said she.

At this sentence, which gave a very present reality to the dreaded
event, Alice shuddered and in a heartrending voice entreated:

“No, no, I can’t do it. Oh, mother, mother!”

Madame Dulaurens was stupefied by this simultaneous blow at her
affection and her will. But woman of the world as she was, she thought
the time for an explanation badly chosen.

“Dear heart, be calm. I quite understand your feelings. It will all be
arranged. It is just lunch-time, and our friends are arriving. Dry your
tears quickly, do, dear. Trust in your mother.”

Alice had succeeded in regaining her calm when a servant announced that
Madame and Mademoiselle Orlandi were in the drawing-room.

As she went down first to receive her visitors, Madame Dulaurens
reflected. She was not unduly disturbed by Alice’s strange refusal,
seeing in it only one of those girlish whims which spring up so easily
and as quickly die again. But she felt she knew the cause and blamed
herself.

“It was I who brought Captain Guibert here,” she thought. “It is all my
fault. And what an absurd idea to ask him here to lunch to-day!”

In her anger against the young man, in whom she already saw the
obstacle to her plans, she was not far from considering herself his
benefactress and accusing him therefore of ingratitude, because she
attached no little importance to her invitations as a passport to
celebrity for her guests.

After lunch, Madame Dulaurens was unable to repress a certain new
disquiet. Looking for Alice, as she kept doing constantly, she saw her
through the drawing-room window, going towards the oakwood on Paule
Guibert’s arm.

All the time she was entertaining Madame Orlandi and Mademoiselle de
Songeon with her smiles and graces she was saying to herself:

“I am quite certain she is being influenced by that wheedling little
creature, who is trying to get her for her own brother.”

And turning to the Captain, who was talking to M. Dulaurens and M.
Landeau, she noticed that his eyes were following the two girls.

“I wasn’t wrong,” she said to herself. “The danger is there.”

Little used to reflection and impatient of every discussion which
could lessen her authority, she never asked herself whether she could
trust Alice’s future to this honourable man; whether, indeed, it was
not her duty to do so, should her child’s love have involuntarily been
given to him. She quite understood, without admitting it to herself,
that a comparison could only be unfavorable to M. de Marthenay, who
had already been mixed up in a disgraceful liaison and whose military
career was without glory or promise. Instinctively she put from her
the thought of any possible rivalry which could at the last moment
disturb an arrangement to which she had irrevocably made up her mind,
an arrangement which flattered at once her insufferable conceit and her
still more overbearing motherly pride. As she chose for her daughter
what she would have chosen for herself, she was in no doubt as to the
wisdom of her choice and her own disinterestedness.

In the meantime Isabelle Orlandi, stopping Jean Berlier as he was going
up to join the group of men, whispered:

“What do you think of him?”

“Of whom?”

“M. Landeau.”

“I don’t think one way or the other,” Jean replied.

“He doesn’t talk much, but he says all he thinks.”

She laughed, showing her white teeth, which reflected the light, and
for the second time Jean found her laugh ring false. He thought of the
songs one hears at night in the country, sung by a belated pedestrian
frightened at the solitude.

Silent and motionless, M. Landeau devoured his fiancée with his eyes.
It was very evident that he felt for her one of those passions that
increases instead of lessening with the decline of youth, when it
suddenly attacks a heart which has until then been a stranger to love.
He was already a middle-aged man, and his clumsy, squarely-built figure
lacked distinction. He was little used to society and was easily
disconcerted by the light and airy graces which are its very life and
soul. The dashing elegance of Jean Berlier, who was only twenty-five,
accentuated still more by contrast his own age and clumsiness. From
afar he gazed at Isabelle, splendid and beautiful in her white dress,
like an idol whom he dared not approach. And she seemed oblivious of
everything, even of the unpleasing presence of her millionaire slave.

Through the oak-branches, the sun’s rays filtered on the soil of the
wood which was covered with a brown carpet of the leaves of past years.

The two girls walked slowly along the path arm in arm. They passed from
sunshine to shade, and from shadow to sunshine again. Amid the shelter
of the old straight-limbed trees they felt the peace all about them.
Alice of the golden locks was dressed in pink. Paule’s dark hair and
mourning dress brought out the paleness of her skin. The fine weather
made them both happy, and almost unconsciously they renewed their
friendship of the convent days and from time to time they stopped to
smile at each other.

Meanwhile neither noticed the other’s excitement. Each had a great
secret. Alice, who thought herself very brave since the scene of the
morning, was burning to be worthy of her friend’s confidence. Paule,
stirred to the depths of her nature, was thinking about the brother
whose affection she was about to reveal.

“Paule,” said Alice, “do you remember our talks at the Sacred Heart?”

“I seldom think about them now,” replied Paule.

“One day we were talking about marriage. Raymonde Ortaire, in the class
above us, was always discussing the subject. She said, ‘I shall never
marry anybody but a rich aristocrat.’ Then we all told in turn what our
ideal was. I could only whisper, ‘I don’t know!’ And you, Paule, I see
you now with your dark eyes--your lovely dark eyes which shine most at
night or in trouble. You said, as if you despised all our ideas, ‘To
marry is to love and nothing else.’ Raymonde laughed, but we felt like
slapping her!”

“You too?” said Paule, with affectionate irony.

“Certainly, I too. Does that surprise you? If you had heard me this
morning you would not be at all astonished.”

A little flush in Alice’s pure cheeks gave her animation which
heightened her charm, and her walk seemed less languid and weary than
usual. Paule, who loved the sweetness of her features though she
thought them weak, was surprised at this new spirit and immediately
felt that it was a good omen for her mission.

“This morning?” she repeated questioningly.

“This very morning,” said Alice solemnly, “I refused to marry.”

She said no more, so that she might enjoy the effect of this. It is
always pleasant for a girl to give someone to understand that she has
refused suitors. A more delicate thought made her add:

“You promise to keep the secret? I shall not even tell you his name.”

Paule, who had guessed it already, smiled rather uneasily. Quivering
with excitement, she waited for explanations. Already she trembled for
him who had sent her on his errand.

“Would it be indiscreet if I asked why you refused?”

Alice stopped. A golden ray, which shot through the leaves, fell
directly on her fair hair. Her supple form bent forward a little and
she cried, radiant as a spring flower.

“To marry means to love and nothing else!”

“You don’t love anyone then?”

“No.”

“Nobody?” persisted Paule.

“Nobody.”

But the girl blushed. Was it at her own words, whose boldness shocked
her natural reserve, or from a sudden fear that she had distorted the
truth?

Paule came to her and put her arm round the slender waist. Then
clasping her quite close in the quiet shelter of the wood she murmured
quickly, almost timidly, astonished at herself for daring to say what
she did:

“Don’t you know that Marcel loves you? He has given you all his heart.
Will you consent to be his wife, Alice? He hopes for no happiness
except from you alone.”

They were both equally affected and both dropped their eyes to the dead
leaves which lay at their feet. At the same moment they both looked up
again, blushed, and with a graceful movement embraced each other, and
burst into tears.

Paule recovered herself first. She looked with new eyes at this
exquisite being leaning on her shoulder, who without uttering a word
had become her sister. Alice, meanwhile, a prey to delicious emotion,
feared its force and thirsted to feel it always at her heart, accused
herself for giving way to it and readily gave way. This first encounter
with love made her see into the secret corners of her soul, still so
unformed and child-like. Her heart unfolded like some rose-bud, which
in the evening seems still closed and next morning one finds with its
opening calyx wet with dew.

“You will say ‘Yes’?” asked Paule softly. And in a voice as thin as a
breath of air Alice at last whispered, “Yes.”

Hand in hand they continued their walk, one listening to the happiness
singing within her and the other forgetful of self, and tasting in all
its fulness this joy which was not for her.

“You are my sister,” said Paule, “and I love you. Marcel deserves to be
happy. He has been so kind to us, I cannot tell you how kind. After my
father’s death we lived through some dreadful times. But my brother,
though so far away, helped us, with all his strength and resources.”

Alice listened to this praise with conflicting emotions. Paule’s words
brought an element of awkwardness into the conversation. Alice thought
nothing of money and did not know its importance. But she could not
imagine a love story without an appropriate setting. Ignorant of life,
she had conceived a wrong idea of the relative importance of vital
matters. And how indeed could she have met it in all its truth?

These were but dim and fleeting impressions. Alice did not regret
that she had said “Yes.” Marcel loved her, and dear Paule at her side
spoke so kindly to her. Feeling the need, however, of reinforcing her
courage, she questioned her friend about the future.

“What must we do now?”

“My mother will come to La Chênaie to ask for your hand. You must
prepare your mother and father. Your mother adores you and surely
wants only to make you happy. And M. Dulaurens will willingly listen to
your mother.”

The oak-trees which sheltered the two girls at this moment were so
thick of foliage that no light could penetrate them. Alice had become
suddenly thoughtful and awoke from her glowing love-dream to that
reality whose approach she instinctively dreaded.

“Should I have to go away with ... Marcel?” she asked.

When she was a child she had always called him by his Christian name.
Now she scarce dared pronounce the two syllables which seemed to burn
her lips.

“Of course, when you are his wife,” said Paule, astonished.

“Yes, yes, of course. But shall we go very far?”

“To Algiers.”

“Oh, that is so far away. My mother will never give her consent.”

Her beautiful eyes were troubled. She already saw her happiness taking
flight.

“Perhaps he would give up Algiers for the time being to please you. But
don’t spoil his career, Alice. I think it is always dangerous to do
that, and Marcel’s is so promising.”

“Oh, you know, Paule dear, I am not a heroine. I shall never be a
Guibert. But he has been brave enough, has he not?”

Paule could hardly keep from laughing.

“You can never be too brave,” she said. “We who have no outside life,
Alice, who have to stay at home, can at least help our brothers, our
husbands, our sons, by our strong and understanding love. We must show
our preference for those men who are brave and of some use in the
world.”

“I have never thought about these things,” said Alice.

“And yet you love Marcel?”

“If he ceased to be useful to his country I should love him just as
well,” Alice replied.

“Ah,” said Paule softly, as if talking to herself. “For my part, I
should never dare to spoil my husband’s career.”

Her companion scarcely heard. She was following her own train of
thought.

“Since he loves me, could he not stay with me, near his mother and my
family? We should be so happy! Our fortune would be quite enough for
both of us.”

“He would not accept that,” answered Paule. And forgetting her mission
of peace in an access of pride, she answered contemptuously:

“So you would not go with him?”

Alice noticed the scorn and answered somewhat angrily:

“Of course, I would go with him everywhere. For I love him, as you
know. I am quite ready. But ...” She hesitated for a moment, and then
she murmured mournfully:

“There is my mother.”

“Your mother loves you and wishes for your happiness above everything.”

“No doubt. But she wishes that I should enjoy it near her, so that she
can enjoy it too. Isn’t that only natural?”

Paule thought of her own mother, who had borne so many separations and
who had never turned her children from their path. She was silent and
her dark eyes sparkled no more. Alice took her hand, and then releasing
it she began to cry.

“Paule, I’m afraid, I’m so afraid. But I love you so.”

It was to Marcel that these passionate words were addressed--through
the medium of Paule. The latter soothed the timid girl as she might a
little sister of her own.

“Someone is coming,” she said suddenly, hearing a noise among the
leaves. “Take care.”

“Will they see that I have been crying?”

“No, hardly. Don’t rub your eyes.” And in a low voice she murmured, “Be
brave. You promise me that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Dear little sister!”

Alice smiled, comforted by this sweet name.

At the bend of the path appeared Isabelle Orlandi, accompanied by Jean
Berlier. She was talking with an almost feverish animation.

“Look,” she said to the two girls as they joined her--and she showed
her left hand, on which a ruby and an emerald glistened.

“Two engagement rings!” she said.

“Two engagement rings?” repeated Alice, amused.

“Yes, M. Landeau is very generous. If you could only see my jewels!
They will fill a big box. I had to choose an ornament, and as I
hesitated between the best of them my very kind fiancé, with a
magnificent gesture, simply said, ‘Keep the lot!’ So I kept them all to
please Mamma. And look at this lorgnette with its handle encrusted with
precious stones.”

“But your eyes are quite good,” said Jean.

Isabelle acknowledged the compliment with a curtsey.

“That doesn’t matter. It’s smart to use one,” she said.

As she was dilating on her good fortune, Madame Dulaurens, escorted by
Captain Guibert and M. Landeau appeared.

Uneasy at her daughter’s long absence she had proposed to her two
guests a stroll in the oakwood. She breathed more freely when she was
with Alice. But she noticed her heightened color, however, and traces
of trouble in her face.

“It is high time,” she thought, “to get rid of our hero.”

Behind her Marcel, too, was studying the girl. He was looking at her
with the eagerness of love which dares not hope too much. But he
quickly lowered his eyes. And when he raised them again they were full
of the peace of love wherein doubt and fear do not linger. Madame
Orlandi and Mademoiselle De Songeon, led by M. Dulaurens, joined the
group. Through the plane-tree avenue they accompanied Paule and Marcel,
who were about to take their leave.

In front of the open gate on the other side of the Chaloux road, before
a humble cottage, a swarm of children were playing in the sun. With
tangled hair, shining healthy faces, and bare feet, they shouted now
with joy and now with anger, when suddenly their mother came out on the
doorstep. She was a peasant woman, of faded appearance, whose figure
indicated approaching motherhood.

“They are very poor,” explained Madame Dulaurens, looking at them, “and
they are always expecting more children. They have seven already, and
just look!”

“Seven children! How awful!” said Mademoiselle de Songeon, turning away
in disgust.

“It is tempting Providence,” added Madame Dulaurens. And Mademoiselle
Orlandi twittered:

“How pretty they would look painted! But in actual life they are dirty
and a nuisance.”

“Those who want them can’t have them,” muttered the peasant woman, who
had overheard this. And she picked up the youngest child and pressed it
to her bosom.

Isabelle laughed a hard laugh and said to her fiancé, looking him
straight in the face:

“Well, you know, I don’t want any children!”

M. Landeau smiled joylessly. An awkward pause followed this sally so
artless and yet so cynical. Only Madame Orlandi was amused.

“Oh, Isabelle, you terrible child!” she said.

Alice kissed Paule as she said good-bye, and Marcel was lost in
admiration of the languid beauty which accompanied her every movement
and gave her an unsubstantial, airy grace. In his love was mingled a
desire to protect her. He would have given all his strength to this
lovely child, whose frailty inspired him with an almost religious
emotion.

Alone with her brother on the road, Paule was kissing the children, who
had stopped their game under the gaze of those whose hostility they
had divined.

“Poor little creatures!” she said with an indignant flash of the eye.
“They don’t love you in these days!”

The peasant woman was flattered and smiled at the girl. “There is a
crowd of them and they grow like weeds!”

“God is good and the earth is big,” said Marcel, who remembered his
father’s joy when he saw beautiful children.

“Yes, Monsieur Guibert. My mother had twelve. I have three brothers
in Paris and four in America. They are far away, but they are still
living.”

Never having left her native place, she easily confused distances.
Paule pointed to the group of chubby mites, who had begun to laugh
again.

“They will be able to keep you later on!”

“In the meantime they eat whole potfuls of soup. My husband toils for
them all day long, and we live from hand to mouth.”

“Have you no land?”

“Not enough to keep a rabbit on!”

Putting a coin into the smallest child’s hand, money she had saved to
buy a pair of gloves, she said:

“Good-bye, be brave.”

When they had reached Montcharvin woods Paule stopped and smiled at her
brother.

“Don’t you want to hear my news? Did you speak to her?”

“No, I understood. She accepts, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, she refused Monsieur de Marthenay this morning. It is a secret.
She loves you. She is charming, and you will have strength enough for
both.”

He did not answer. And brother and sister exchanged no more confidences
for they felt the same shyness about their hidden feelings. As they
arrived at the gate Marcel spoke to Paule again.

“We must let mother know,” he said. “You tell her, dear, since you are
playing Providence to me to-day.”

“Very well,” answered Paule. “I will tell her presently.”

Later in the evening, Madame Guibert, having heard her daughter’s news,
was silent for a long time.

“Is this happiness for us?” she murmured at last.

“She is very nice,” said Paule.

And the old lady added, “May she make him happy! I would rather have
had her not so rich and with more strength of character. But since he
loves her, we must love her too. Let us pray for them.”

She never thought for a moment that her son might be refused.




                              CHAPTER VI

                     MONSIEUR AND MADAME DULAURENS


Every morning Alice Dulaurens said to herself that she would spend the
day inducing her parents to give their consent to this marriage of
which the thought alone filled her with happiness; and every evening,
having said nothing, she waited for the next day. But she soon had to
make up her mind, for her friend Paule informed her of the date on
which the definite offer was to be made.

On the eve of Madame Guibert’s visit she had still said nothing.
Feeling anxious, she was late in going to sleep and got up very early,
thinking to gain time. The hours sped rapidly, and her love-stricken
heart trembled. She watched first her father and then her mother, in
order to get one aside to listen to her request, and like all timid
people she never found the right moment.

“Mamma is alone in her room,” she thought. She ran there but came out
quickly, for her mother was busy writing.

“It will be better to come back presently,” she said to herself.

With some color in her cheeks she started at once to look for her
father.

“Papa is going round the garden,” she said. But he was talking to the
gardener. Thus she found a hundred weak reasons for keeping back her
confidence. At last she made up her mind to speak after lunch.

“That is the time when one feels best disposed,” she assured herself,
to find an excuse for her cowardice.

Unhappily for her plans, Madame Orlandi came to lunch. On the stroke
of twelve she arrived, carrying her pug Pistache, which she never left
behind her, and she began her mild and friendly Italian prattle.

“I am not putting you out? You are so kind. I hate lunching by myself.
Isabelle and the maid have gone to Lyons to see about her trousseau,
you know. A wedding makes such a fuss. My poor head is splitting.”

“What a good idea to come to us,” said the extremely bored Madame
Dulaurens. And M. Dulaurens gravely agreed:

“The preparations for a wedding are certainly very disturbing to the
peace of the house. But it is in keeping with social usage that this
ceremony should remain in our memories if only on account of all the
trouble it gives us.”

“You don’t mind the darling lunching with us?” said Madame Orlandi,
pointing to the pug as they entered the dining-room.

“Certainly--we should never be cruel enough to separate you!”

Madame Orlandi seated Pistache at her side and at once made him the
object of conversation.

“Yesterday my dear little pet had a sad time. We went to see M.
Loigny, uncle of that dear Jean Berlier who is such a good friend
to my daughter. He lives near Chambéry in a villa, all covered with
roses. His house is a scented bower. He has great taste, this old man,
but very little politeness. He lives in his garden quite forgetful of
mankind and manners. Pistache destroyed a young rose-tree, and the
flower-maniac threw him out of the door. I departed in a most dignified
way leaving my daughter behind, M. Jean being kind enough to escort her
home in the evening, when he made profuse apologies.”

“Is M. Landeau away?” said Madame Dulaurens, rather shocked at the way
in which Madame Orlandi interpreted her maternal duties.

Quite unmoved, the Italian Countess answered:

“M. Landeau is away. He is doing splendid business at present. My girl
will scarcely see him before the day the contract is signed. He is not
exactly beautiful to look upon. Isabelle is very artistic. But she
will get used to him. You can get used to everything, except being no
longer beautiful after you have once been so.”

Regrets for her lost youth made her sigh. She lowered her face,
smothered with violet powder,--that face which for a long time she had
not dared to gaze upon in the mirror. When the butler offered her a
dish of choice fruits, she looked at it with a gasp and, turning to
Madame Dulaurens, asked:

“Are there no sweets?”

“No,” answered Madame Dulaurens, rather surprised.

“How tiresome!”

Madame Dulaurens, now really astonished at her behavior, remarked:

“You didn’t tell us, dear friend, that we were to have the pleasure of
your society to-day.”

“Oh,” said the Italian, not in the least disconcerted, “I am very
easily pleased and I understand your ways. But it is Pistache. He won’t
understand. Every day he has his three courses and a sweet. He will
think that I have punished him, and he hasn’t deserved it.”

Madame Dulaurens was quite out of patience, but she had a white of egg
beaten with some sugar, which was offered to the idol. As they rose
from table the little dog, under the influence of his greed, insisted
on staying behind, in spite of the frantic calls of his mistress. He
paid for it, however. The butler saw him, and having made sure that
the coast was clear and the company all gone, with a well-directed kick
sent him flying to the other end of the dining-room. Pistache gave vent
to a dull growl, but was not at all astonished. All he knew of life
consisted of extremes, and he travelled philosophically from kisses to
kicks, from the drawing-room to the pantry.

Immediately after lunch M. Dulaurens, assuming a busy and important
air, which imparted a comical cast to his placid face, bowed to the
ladies and departed to his workroom, where one of his tenants was
waiting. It was a question of rent in arrears. The tenant naturally
claimed a deduction. Labor was dear, money tight, and the harvests had
been bad.

“Bad!” cried M. Dulaurens with that hardness which he appeared to keep
for his tenants and tradesmen, and which redeemed him in his own eyes
from the weakness which he displayed toward his wife.

“Bad! But what about all last year’s wine? What have you done with it?
There were barrels and barrels of it. You haven’t sold it?”

“Oh, Sir, you can’t think that. It would only have fetched a poor
price. It was a disgrace. We preferred to drink it ourselves.”

M. Dulaurens, forgetting his peaceful instincts when his interests were
concerned, was going to fly into a rage, when his eyes fell on a work
lying on his table between a society novel and a book on heraldry.
It was Nicole’s handbook: “The Methods of Peace among Mankind.” He
had bought it cheap on account of its title and had contented himself
with the reading of that alone, which was sympathetic to the natural
tranquillity of his disposition. Calming himself, he sent the peasant
away with many kind words, but without the slightest concession.

“Landlords are really to be pitied,” he protested. “They do not
know what to do. My friend M. Timoléon Mestrallet himself has great
difficulty in getting out of debt.”

M. Mestrallet was an old miser in the neighborhood, who spent his
holidays in complaining of the bad times and the difficulty he had in
making ends meet. But he never said anything about the enormous sums he
saved every year.

As the tenant was going away, inwardly reproaching himself for having
gained nothing by the interview, Alice came into the room. She carried
a cup of coffee made as her father liked it. She counted on the
favorable effect the fragrant beverage would have on her father, who
was inordinately fond of it and accepted the cup now with an angelic
smile of pleasure. While he was taking little satisfied sips, she
sat down, then got up, and could not remain still. Confused and
frightened, she trembled violently as she forced out these simple words:

“Father, you are going to have a visitor presently.”

“Well, my dear, your mother is in the drawing-room. And who is it?”

“Madame Guibert,” replied a choking voice, which should have revealed
the young girl’s secret to Monsieur Dulaurens, if the latter had not
a long time ago abdicated his privileges as head of the family and
neglected the knowledge of his own children.

“Madame Guibert? She never goes to see anyone since she became a widow.
It is an honor that we shall appreciate.”

And drawing up his little figure to show his appreciation, he said,
with a great air of superiority:

“She is not very used to society, but she is a good woman, and her sons
have succeeded very well.”

Alice thought his praise rather inadequate and murmured, “Her husband
saved my life, Father. You remember when I had typhoid fever?”

“Yes, yes,” he said quickly. He also remembered that the doctor’s bill
might not have been settled, and he did not wish to go into the matter
very deeply. Could Madame Guibert be coming to claim this old debt?
But surely not, she would not be so impertinent--especially now, when
her son and daughter were so kindly received at La Chênaie. She would
be unwilling to spoil such good social relations by the intrusion
of business. Why then this visit, for which Alice had been prepared
beforehand?

“Did she tell you she was coming?” he asked.

“Yes, Papa.” And then in a very low voice she spoke again. “Madame
Guibert is coming on my account.”

M. Dulaurens, who was taking short steps up and down the room for the
sake of his digestion (for this room with its ever closed bookcases was
particularly useful to him for this health-giving exercise), stopped
suddenly and seemed to realise at last that something unusual was going
on in his house.

“On your account?” he repeated uneasily.

With the brusque quickness of the irresolute, Alice at once burnt her
boats:

“Father, don’t you wish me to be happy?” she asked.

“Certainly, certainly! We wish it above all things.” And already he
saw all sorts of difficulties to disturb his peaceful existence in
the future and even his digestion at the present time. However, he
loved his pretty Alice, whose gentleness harmonised with his own
character, and he would even have adored and spoilt her, had he not
been restrained by the fear of his wife and the vain desire to imitate
in her absence her authoritative ways. Distracted between so many
feelings, whose complexity frightened him and hardened his usually
benign face, he demanded an explanation.

“You talk to me about Madame Guibert and then about your happiness. I
don’t understand.”

Alice hesitated no longer, and her nervousness itself prevented her
from guessing her father’s thoughts.

“She is going to ask for my hand on behalf of her son.”

“The captain?”

“Yes.”

She went on more falteringly, the whole force of her love summed up in
the poor little hope which her words expressed:

“Father, I beg you, you must consent and persuade Mamma.”

But for the closing phrase M. Dulaurens would have been touched.
He took in things in detail, and the last words always made most
impression on his mind.

“Persuade Mamma!” he cried. “It is always your mother,” he said
sharply, and began once more his walk up and down.

He made sure that the door was closed, stopped to listen, and then,
encouraged by the silence and sure of their privacy, he let himself go
boldly:

“Your mother! Don’t you know, my dear, that my consent is of far more
importance? The law demands that. And this law is just. There must be
one supreme authority in a household, and this authority is vested in
the head of the family, the _Paterfamilias_!”

He threw a rapid glance at the mirror to study his own omnipotent
appearance. He seemed to have forgotten the serious subject of the
interview, which the trembling Alice feared to recall to him. Must she
again pronounce the burning name of Marcel Guibert?

But coming down to earth again M. Dulaurens spared her at least this
new exhibition of courage, as he repeated word for word a sentence of
his wife’s:

“This young man is a hero. Heroism makes him one of us!”

By which his wife had meant, that one might safely receive Marcel
Guibert in a drawing-room so distinguished as that of La Chênaie!

Not wishing to commit himself, he hastened to raise several objections:

“But you wish for a life of calm, I suppose, my dear Alice. You
don’t want a husband who goes about conquering the world. You have a
tranquil and peaceful nature. Will Marcel remain at Chambéry?”

“Father,” said the girl, remembering Paule’s lesson of heroism, “a wife
must help her husband and not hamper his career.”

“His career? Well, he can follow that near us. Chambéry is a garrison
that is very much sought after. He can exchange--nothing is easier--and
we have influence with the War Office. Or he might resign. But then he
has no money.”

Alice was silent, and her father, coming nearer, saw her tears. His
heart was stirred, and the real foundation of his nature was laid bare,
a nature which snobbishness and the habit of dependence had overlap. He
gently stroked his daughter’s face with his hand.

“Don’t cry, darling. I want you to be happy.”

But all his hankerings after self-assertion fled at once like birds
before the beater; for the door opened and Madame Dulaurens, having
at last gotten rid of Madame Orlandi and growing uneasy about Alice’s
prolonged absence, entered the study in her turn. The little imperious
air which had adorned M. Dulaurens’s face for his daughter’s benefit
was no more, and his final tenderness had gone. Instinctively he
assumed the modest attitude which suits a clerk in the presence of his
chief. Robbed of all conjugal courage and only wishing to avoid a
family scene, he fled with a well-turned phrase:

“I leave our daughter to you, my dear. She wants to get married and
will tell you all about it.”

Turning to Alice, he added:

“Here is your mother. Arrange matters with her. Whatever she does is
well done.” And with these words he effaced himself, above everything
anxious to be at peace with all the world.

Madame Dulaurens had not replied to her husband’s speech. For the first
time in her life she was jealous of him. Was he not mixing himself
up with Alice’s confidences? She loved her daughter with a selfish
and absorbing love, and by the continual encroachments of her power
as a mother had, little by little, extinguished (without noticing it
herself) the personality of this delicate, shrinking girl, already by
nature too indolent and overprone to unquestioning submission. She
enjoyed her daughter’s beauty as if it were her own possession, and
treated this young life precisely as though she had but a helpless
new-born infant to deal with. It was impossible for a guileless,
affectionate disposition not to recognise such unfaltering devotion and
not to be affected by it. Alice strove by her obedience to please her
domineering mother, whose eyes she felt incessantly upon her; but this
watchful regard was paralysing her with fear.

As the door closed on her husband Madame Dulaurens, glorying in the
impression she had made and already on her guard against the danger
which she guessed, came up to the girl and, putting her arms round her,
sat beside her on the chair.

“My little Countess de Marthenay,” she whispered in her ear as she
kissed her.

But the girl was still silent, and her tears began to flow.

“You want to marry, don’t you? And you confided in your father. Nothing
could please me better. We shall never be parted. Armand has promised
me that.” Still unwilling to doubt the realisation of her plans, after
a pause, she continued:

“He will get on. If he cannot get the position he wants he will resign.
Your fortune will be sufficient to live on without his working, and,
besides, in society one always has something to do.”

Alice’s tears and persistent silence at last warned her mother that the
trouble she feared was a reality.

“I was mistaken then, dearest child? You refuse to be his wife? You
don’t care for him?”

Yes, that was it. Alice made an affirmative gesture and Madame
Dulaurens knew with absolute certainty that her daughter’s heart was
given to Marcel Guibert. She was mistress enough of herself to hide
her discomfiture, and she even began at once to think out a way of
avoiding an event which she considered without hesitation or reflection
to be a great catastrophe. So much was she guided by her unrestrained
prejudices and preconceptions, and by a maternal passion whose
selfishness was incapable of sacrifice.

“You don’t want to marry yet, dearest,” she murmured softly. “Is it
because you want to stay with me? But I want you so much to be happy
that I cannot agree to keep you--although I shall feel the separation
bitterly--so long as I know that you are happy, and can see with my own
eyes daily that my darling is contented. But you don’t answer. It isn’t
that, then? Have you given way to your feelings without my permission?
Can you have defied me to that extent?”

The rebuke, which had only the effect of redoubling Alice’s tears,
escaped Madame Dulaurens in an unguarded moment. Now her diplomacy
returned to her. She stopped short, and when she began again it was in
a coaxing voice.

“Am I not your best friend and confidante? Have you any secrets
from me? Dearest, I have not deserved this. If you don’t love M. de
Marthenay, if you love someone else, you must tell me. And we will
arrange your future together.” A new hope filled the girl’s heart and
at last she sighed out:

“Yes, Mamma.”

“And who is it?” asked Madame Dulaurens, kissing her. “Who has stolen
my darling’s heart? Your lips are quite near my ear. Tell me his name.”

She knew the name quite well, yet she wanted to hear it from the
trembling mouth. Alice could not resist this gentleness. She dried her
eyes and managed to say, with one of those quivers of the whole body
which follow a violent fit of sobbing:

“Madame Guibert is coming presently.... She wants to speak about me ...
for her son.”

“For the captain?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my dearest! How you hurt me!”

And she left her daughter and seated herself in a chair close by. She
hid her face in her hands and sat motionless, in a most despairing
attitude. Alice, drying her own tears, tried to console her.

“Why have I hurt you, Mother dear?”

Madame Dulaurens lifted her head slowly and with an expression of the
deepest sorrow replied:

“Because I see quite well that you are going to leave me. M. Guibert
will take you far away from us--into some wretched little town in
France, or even to Algiers. He might even want to take you with him on
some expedition. Love will not keep these conquering heroes back for
very long from glory and danger. How _could_ you love him? You
are so gentle and so home-loving.”

Standing beside her mother, her eyes guiltily lowered to the ground,
Alice murmured:

“Oh, Mamma, I don’t know. Perhaps because I am weak ... and he is
strong.”

With her chin in her hand and without looking at the girl Madame
Dulaurens went on as if she were seeking an explanation for herself.

“I can understand his wanting to marry you. The Guiberts have been all
but ruined since the Doctor made himself the savior of that banker at
Annecy. They say that there was no bankruptcy, that everything was paid
up. But one never knows. That suicide and failure were very curious.
And then that expedition to Madagascar! Oh, I agree that the Captain
distinguished himself, there is no doubt about that, and I made him
feel it clearly enough. And he has every reason to be thankful to me.
Instead of that he proposes to take my daughter away from me. That
expedition into an unhealthy country was terrible. All our soldiers
got the fever there. Yes, all of them, my dear. I would not want you
to marry an invalid. It is my duty to see to that. Oh, I only want you
to be happy. You see, dear, young girls like you know nothing of life.
They have young loving hearts only too ready to admire heroism and
courage, and then they confuse admiration with love. It is not the same
thing, my dear Alice. You will find it out for yourself some day. I
only hope you will not find it out too late!”

With a few short, cutting sentences she destroyed the happiness of
which Alice had seemed so sure. Little by little, the girl had drawn
back into the window. Half hidden in its recess, she began to cry
again, quietly wringing her hands in despair.

Seated upright in her armchair, Madame Dulaurens coldly renewed the
attack:

“Now I really thought that M. de Marthenay pleased you. He is very
attractive, isn’t he? A good name, a fine figure, and fortune. He is
a cavalryman, and rides divinely. He dances perfectly. I chose him in
preference to anybody else. And you were going to stay with us. We were
to have our part in your happiness, and you want to take this away from
us altogether.”

“Mamma!” cried Alice reproachfully.

“Children are horribly ungrateful,” continued her mother. “You, of whom
I took so much care in your delicate childhood and during your typhoid
fever, now you are already thinking of leaving me!”

Attempting to conceal the selfishness of this complaint, she added:

“If only I were sure that your happiness is there! But not to be able
to look after your health; to live in daily fear that you might be ill,
so far away--in some garrison where there was no doctor; to be always
afraid for the peace and comfort of your home, which I should never
see; not to be there to welcome your babies, if God sends you any ...
that will be my sad life hereafter.”

Alice, deeply touched by this show of tenderness and motherly devotion,
held out her arms.

“Mother, Mother,” she cried, “I will never leave you. I will stay with
you.”

This half-victory was so quickly won that Madame Dulaurens, thinking
it sufficient, insisted no further on her plans and did not pronounce
Armand de Marthenay’s name again.

“Little Alice, my darling little Alice, I have won you back to me,”
she said, pressing the girl to her heart. “I love you so. You don’t
know how much I love you. I think I love you too much. I want you to be
happy.”

These words came naturally to her lips at the very moment when she
was breaking her daughter’s heart. But Alice, leaning on the motherly
shoulder, saw through the open window a woman in heavy mourning, coming
down the avenue towards the house. Slow and bent, Madame Guibert was
coming confidently to ask her hand for Marcel. At this sight the girl
shuddered and released herself from her mother’s embrace.

“She has no warning of what is coming,” she thought. “It is too late.
Poor, poor woman!”

Madame Dulaurens, astonished and made uneasy again by her daughter’s
face, was thinking, “Can she be on the point of changing her mind a
second time?”

Alice had left the window to avoid the painful sight.

“How she will suffer! I won’t do it! I won’t!” she said to herself, a
prey to despair and dragging herself from one chair to another.

Pity dominated her, even in the ruin of her shattered dream of love.
To retard the inevitable blow hanging over this poor woman, already so
bowed down under the burden of fate, she did not even remind her mother
from whom the fatal refusal ought to come. She kept her near her with
idle words. No doubt her father would procrastinate, would decline to
give any definite reply. Like all weak people, who were content with
the smallest successes, she wished only to spare Madame Guibert too
sudden a blow, and would not admit to herself that she felt already
incapable of saving her, though she had been the first to weep over it
and must weep over it for the rest of her life.

After several minutes of anxious expectation Madame Guibert was
announced in the drawing-room.

“I will go to her,” said Madame Dulaurens, and, kissing the daughter
whom she was sacrificing, she went out of the room. Scarcely was the
door shut when Alice, her heart beating wildly, sprang forward and with
trembling hands tried in vain to open it.

“Mamma,” she cried through the partition, “I love him, I love him! Say
yes, I beg of you.”

She opened the door at last. But the corridor was empty. Madame
Dulaurens had gone. She had heard that last heartrending cry.
Accustomed to treating the girl as a child who must be governed, she
attached no importance to this. Calmly, without compunction, fully
persuaded that she was acting as a tender and devoted mother, she went
down to receive Madame Guibert and when she entered the drawing-room,
she had already prepared the polite and amiable formula of her refusal.

Seeing herself deserted, Alice was crushed. She stood motionless and
panting, trembling in every limb, ready to sink to the ground. All at
once she pulled herself together, ran hurriedly down the staircase, and
finding a gate to the park open, fled far away from the house. She ran
to hide her pain in the shadow of the oaks--the same oaks under which
she had heard from Paule’s lips the avowal of Marcel’s love. She sat
down on the dead leaves. She would have liked to lie upon the gentle
earth, to lie there forever, lifeless and forgotten.

It was here, in this spot full of mystery, that she had felt the first
consciousness of her youth. Here her eyes had first wakened to the
loveliness of nature. Here she had suddenly understood the joy of life.
To her it seemed the very shrine of that fair existence which came to
its close so soon. She had no courage left, and her only thought was of
death.

She never knew how long she was in the wood. There she wept her heart
out, telling herself she would be faithful to her lover’s memory, and
that if she could not belong to him she would belong to no one. But she
did not tell herself that this promise in itself was a renunciation. So
she stood self-condemned, incapable of that active love which strives
and triumphs.




                              CHAPTER VII

                             THE PROPOSAL


With her slow and lingering step Madame Guibert came up the avenue of
plane-trees. For this visit of ceremony she was dressed in her newest
black dress, and Paule with the greatest care had done her hair and
arranged the folds of the widow’s veil.

“You look splendid now,” her son and daughter assured her, as she was
getting into the carriage before the steps at Le Maupas. In spite of
his mother’s protestations, Marcel had ordered a smart Victoria for her
instead of Trélaz’s old carriage.

Nodding and smiling at her children with great tenderness, she drove
away in all confidence, like a messenger of peace and happiness. But
she discovered the way was very short and the strange horse very fast.
It was her wish to get out at the gate of the Avenue at La Chênaie, so
that the unusual luxury of her carriage might not be noticed. It gave
her a kind of awkward feeling, it seemed a lie to her honest soul.

“You can put me down here,” she said to the coachman. “I will walk
the rest of the way.” She went along the avenue leaning on her black
parasol. Her heart was beating furiously. In spite of her bravery in
facing life, she was still very shy, and society terrified her. In her
natural honesty and uprightness, she understood very little about the
polite phrases and forms which so cleverly hide the selfish or wicked
trend of the speaker’s thoughts--or the utter lack of them. Then, too,
she had an exaggerated idea of her own awkwardness and found another
cause of anxiety in that; not at all on her own account, but on her
son’s, for the sake of whose happiness she still, despite her old age,
desired to please.

But then, did she not know full well in advance the result of her
undertaking? Could anyone hesitate joyfully to accept the offer of
her dear Marcel, whose whole life proclaimed his worth? It was not
merely because she was his mother. Love didn’t blind her in the least
when she saw and admired the physical seductiveness of his tall,
graceful figure, upright as a sapling; of his proudly carried head,
his fine, strong features, and above all his eyes, whose glance could
chill or warm according as they gazed sternly or kindly--greenish
eyes, but large in size, full of fire and astonishingly direct in
their expression. What she knew of him she imagined, poor mother,
ever other woman must be able to read in his face; the energy which
met difficulties with dignity, almost with disdain; that generous
and active kindliness of heart; that commanding quality of voice
and gesture which told of an ardent spirit and a vigorous mind, the
character of a born leader. Certainly he was not one of the insipid,
stupid race who conceal their dry, selfish, hard souls under a worldly
polish and a uniform correctness of manner. She who consented to
share his lot, to suffer and to dare with him, would have no dull,
commonplace existence. He would enlarge her mind, expand her feelings,
and bring to maturity the flower of her soul, whose complete unfoldment
is the most beautiful thing in human life.

And then had not Madame Dulaurens been told by her daughter of the
proposed visit and that her request had already been granted? So Madame
Guibert came with mingled confidence and apprehension to the Dulaurens’
villa. The walk tired her, she was growing stout, and the seriousness
of the occasion contributed its share to her fatigue. She respected
Marcel’s choice though it was not hers, and she was ready to forget her
own wishes and bow to his. She was prepared to give her whole-hearted
assistance in the new life which was in store for him, and cherished
the thought that within a few minutes she would be welcoming another
daughter to her home and her affections.

Before ringing she stopped, to quiet the beatings of her heart and
to take breath. She did not raise her eyes to the window where the
desperate and heart-broken Alice was crying her eyes out.

Madame Guibert was received by M. Dulaurens in the drawing-room and she
saw a happy omen in this. The little insignificant man could not be
expected to make much impression on her, and the meeting with him gave
her a little more time to recover herself. After a few polite words
which he tried to amplify as much as possible, Madame Guibert found
herself unable to keep back the object of her visit any longer and said:

“You have guessed why I came to a Chênaie, Monsieur Dulaurens?” And she
smiled sweetly, with that pretty, fresh smile that she had kept to old
age and which was the reflection of a soul that had remained pure and
unsullied.

“No, Madame Guibert, I am quite in the dark concerning it. We are
greatly flattered, I assure you, by your visit. I only regret that
Madame Dulaurens is not here.”

Greatly worried, and afraid to assume any disturbing responsibility,
the unhappy man could not rest. He pulled the bell quickly and when the
maid answered it he asked:

“Have you told Madame?”

“I am looking for her, Sir. Madame is not in her room. Madame is
perhaps with Mademoiselle in Monsieur’s room.”

“Perhaps so. Go and tell her.”

And turning to Madame Guibert, trying to gain time, he said:

“It is tiresome, very tiresome, but, as you see, they are looking for
her, they have gone to tell her. She will not be long. I am very sorry
to keep you waiting.”

“What I have to say, Monsieur, interests you quite as much as Madame
Dulaurens,” said Madame Guibert, who was so full of her mission that
she did not think of noticing her questioner’s little tricks. The
terrified M. Dulaurens had sat down, but he at once got up again. Was
he going to be left alone to answer this most embarrassing question?
Would they make him receive the first shock in this way? No, it was
impossible; his wife would have to be present at the interview.

“I assure you she is coming,” he cried hurriedly. “Please wait a
minute, Madame, I beg you. Madame Dulaurens would be so sorry to miss
your call. And you could certainly explain things better to her. That
is quite clear, quite clear.”

As he multiplied his words he rang the bell again and, quite unable to
stand the strain any longer, went to the door and half opened it.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” he said.

As he put his head into the corridor Madame Guibert raised her eyes
and surprised him in this frightened and pitiful attitude. A crushed
man is still more to be pitied than a fool. Madame Guibert felt ashamed
for him and thought:

“It will certainly be much better to wait for Madame Dulaurens. What I
could say to him would matter very little.”

A slight misgiving began to lessen her confidence. She mentally
compared her poor companion with her own husband whom no circumstance
could have deprived of his composure, his clear-sightedness, his
firmness.

“What a difference!” she reflected sorrowfully, for she was quite
incapable of overbearing pride. She did not think of herself, who had
made such splendid, fearless men and women of her sons and daughters.

While M. Dulaurens was persistently enquiring after her health she was
looking affectionately at a portrait of Alice as a child.

“She has scarcely changed at all,” she said. “Dear little Alice, so
pretty and gentle. How we shall love her! She is so frail and delicate,
but she will grow stronger. We will surround her with love and care. We
will make a hardy flower of this hothouse blossom. And perhaps she will
keep _him_ near us better than I could. I am so old now, and every
year these separations become more and more cruel.”

She did not disguise from herself her womanly weakness.

At last Madame Dulaurens burst in like a whirl-wind. She flew to her
husband’s assistance. Fearing that by now he might have blundered and
said, something stupid, she had come downstairs as quickly as she
could. The severity of her rule did not suffice to reassure her, for
she scarcely suspected the despotism of it.

In many flattering words she excused herself to Madame Guibert for
keeping her waiting. The latter, at the sight of her, had already
lost almost all of her modest confidence. What could she expect of a
favorable nature from this still beautiful and elegant woman, whose
high-pitched voice, so patronising and hard, whose affected politeness
scarcely hid the pride and dryness of her soul. At once she felt the
difference in their points of view concerning the serious things of
life. An abyss separated them, which only youth and love, in their
madness, could think of bridging over. She had a secret conviction
that all which weighed so heavily on her heart was going to be held
as naught, and that all her devotion, her energy, and her toil, the
true mark of aristocracy in the human race, would presently be matched
against those worldly pretensions of which she thought nothing at Le
Maupas and of which she discovered suddenly the disturbing reality.
Feeling the weakness of her age and poverty, she implored God’s help.

In the meantime Madame Dulaurens continued to shower compliments and
attentions on her visitor and got ready to profit by the shyness which
she suspected to find. As she heaped up praise on large families,
Madame Guibert saw her opportunity to introduce her request.

“How good you are, Madame, to say so! Yes, my sons have worked
splendidly. And I have come to see you about one of them--about Marcel.”

She had no doubt that she gave her to understand that she would never
have come to see her without good cause. She praised Alice with tender
affection. Her heart inspired her here. “Marcel could not see her
without loving her. He remembered that as a child she had said to him
in their games, ‘I am so happy with you--I want to stay with you.’ He
has requested me to ask you for your dear child’s hand. He promises to
make her happy and as to his happiness, you will have assured it for
ever.”

Madame Dulaurens, who generally had so much to say, was silent,
thinking she would thus increase Madame Guibert’s embarrassment. And M.
Dulaurens watched her in order to imitate her. Somewhat disturbed by
this silence, Marcel’s mother continued softly:

“You know that we have no money. My son did not think at all about
this, because he loves her. My husband left his children more honor
than money. But, although so young, Marcel has a brilliant record,
which gives assurance of his future.”

And she added in a tone full of dignity, “That is a fortune in itself!”

“We feel exceedingly flattered,” said M. Dulaurens at last. He had been
struggling between the fear of wounding good Madame Guibert and that of
annoying his wife.

With a look, the latter silenced him. What had he to do with it?

“Certainly we are extremely honored,” she replied with calculated
slowness. “The honor takes us by surprise. We were not at all prepared
for it.”

“Alice did not tell you anything about it then? ... or are you trifling
with me?” asked Madame Guibert in great surprise.

“Your family has not very much to boast of,” went on Madame Dulaurens
quietly. “We know, Madame, that Monsieur Guibert ruined himself to save
his brother at Annecy. Unhappily he was unable to save him from suicide
and ... liquidation of his affairs.”

The word “liquidation” thus pronounced meant bankruptcy; and Madame
Guibert could not fail to understand the malice in these words. She
had come with a message of love and peace, and was received like an
enemy. The injustice brought the blood to her face, and her clear,
gentle eyes were troubled. From this point, without being able to
explain the feeling to herself, she felt the game was lost. However,
she continued:

“Oh, there was no liquidation. All the creditors were paid principal
and interest. There can be no possible doubt about that. We have as
good a reputation at Annecy as at Chambéry.”

She thought of her husband’s splendid courage and her little Paule’s
lost dowry. In what had all these sacrifices ended? And was money to be
henceforth the only thing that could command respect and esteem?

But her sufferings were not yet at an end. Madame Dulaurens, with that
ease which society life supplies, went on boldly, with a smile on her
lips:

“Captain Guibert has had a magnificent career. Decorated so young! You
know that nobody appreciates his worth more than I. How you must have
suffered through this long, long Madagascar campaign! We thought of you
so often and pitied and envied you at the same time. And tell me, has
he quite gotten over the effects of those dreadful fevers which take so
long to cure?”

The cup was full. Madame Guibert could not answer. If she had tried
to speak she would have Burst into tears. They had touched the sacred
place in her heart, her children. To sacrifice your fortune to save
the honor of your name, to give your sons for your country, to expose
them to death, only to hear wicked, lying allusions, discrediting
disinterestedness and heroism, and to have to accept them in the face
of that coterie which is called society!

But Madame Dulaurens went on savagely defending her own and giving her
unhappy defenceless victim one wound after another.

“I cannot tell you anything definite, Madame, one way or the other. I
will faithfully submit your offer to my daughter and let you know her
answer soon. It is the fashion nowadays to consult young girls about
their inclinations. But I foresee that the prospect of a separation
cannot fail to frighten the dear child, for she has been accustomed
to be near me, near us. We have never left each other. I admire your
strength of mind. One of your girls is a nun in Paris, is she not? Two
of your sons are in Tonkin. Captain Guibert is going back to Algiers.
How brave you are, and what an example to all those mothers who love
their children too much!”

“And so you think I love them less than those other mothers do,” Madame
Guibert would have liked to answer. “Every time they left me my heart
was torn, yet I bore them as I could, all those heartrending good-byes,
and I said nothing, fearing to weaken them who were leaving me to go
abroad and fill a wider sphere, or to hamper them by keeping them
beside me. I have always encouraged them to use all the talents that
God gave them. And what you do not know, Madame, is that separation,
far from lessening a mother’s and a son’s love, purifies and ennobles
it. It takes away their natural selfishness and invests them with that
immortal beauty of sacrifice, in which joy and devotion are mingled.”

But her lips remained speechless. Later she remembered all the minutest
details of this scene, only to be intensely humiliated by it and even
to see in it, in her religious feeling, the punishment of the too great
pride that she had in the number and qualities of her children.

Madame Dulaurens had not stopped talking long.

“Alice is hesitating by nature,” she continued. “She is still so
young--a mere child! There were other offers before yours. This is
a confidence, of course. They have this advantage that they would
not take our daughter from us. It is a great point in Alice’s eyes.
Nobility, fortune, all are there. If the Captain would only consent not
to leave Chambéry, to resign when necessary, to live near us, near you
too! Is he not surfeited with fame?”

Madame Guibert got up and said simply.

“I do not know, Madame. I thank you.”

She thanked her enemy for having tormented her needlessly! Never had
she felt so weak and so helpless. Madame Dulaurens, as she went to the
door with her, felt sorry for her and, satisfied with her victory,
overwhelmed her with congratulations on her health, on her children who
had formed a little France out in Tonkin, on Paule who was so beautiful
and distinguished, who did not come often enough to see Alice. She was
going to keep her daughter, so she could afford to be generous. On the
doorstep she seemed to be parting with her best friend with the best
grace in the world. Behind her trotted M. Dulaurens, bowing like a
little automaton.

Left alone again, Madame Guibert went down the long plane avenue. She
breathed freely, as if she had just escaped a great danger. That woman
had been unkind and hard to her. How instinctively she had known what
would wound her pride and delicacy of feeling. How she had fastened
upon her brother-in-law’s misfortune, which had made so great a demand
upon Dr. Guibert’s strength of will and presence of mind and which had
brought about the financial ruin of the family; upon the weariness
of that colonial expedition, over which Marcel’s splendid health had
triumphed. What a sinister interpretation she had put on these events
which were her glory! And yet she herself had brought the olive-branch
and had spoken gently. Life, her life of humble, daily devotion, had
not taught her that maternal love contracts the heart more often than
it widens it, otherwise she would have understood that it was this
warped feeling which had made Madame Dulaurens defend in every way her
threatened happiness, the happiness which she mistook in all good faith
for that of her daughter.

But solitude was not long much comfort to her. Must she not go back to
Le Maupas to tell her son the sad news? The thought of the pain which
she could not spare him, of which she brought the tidings, brought
to her eyes the tears which she had so long tried to keep back. The
sun’s rays crossed the tops of the thick trees, as slowly wended his
course towards the mountain. For the first time in her life it hurt
her to return to her old home, where she knew they were awaiting her
confidently and impatiently.

With a tired step, which now dragged more than ever, she made her slow
and hopeless way back. She felt the weight of that one day more than
the weight of her sixty years. As she walked she reproached herself
that she had not been, as she called it, equal to her task. Why had
she not been able to find more persuasive words to plead Marcel’s
cause? She had been with people accustomed to society compliments. Why
had she not taken their ways into account and flattered their vanity?
Such concessions and amiabilities were the means of accomplishing
one’s end. Was not her son the very person of all in the world whose
achievements supplied the excuse for boasting; and could not his
bravery have been changed for the occasion into the current coin of
display and ostentation? Would it have been lessened in any way by
such use of it? Marcel was good-looking, prepossessing, almost famous.
He had a courtesy of manner which lent distinction to his gestures.
What would she not have given for the possession of those advantages?
But no, she was only a poor woman, incapable of flattery in such a
serious matter. And then she experienced, in talking of herself and her
children, that feeling of shyness which affects all refined natures.
Strong, at home, she lost this strength as soon as she crossed the
threshold. Thus in the face of injustice she had no resource but tears.
Yet how many times had she hidden herself, that her tears might not be
seen, on occasions of parting, for a time or forever! Was she now going
to shed tears publicly in face of those who had hurt her? Without doubt
God had tried her to punish her too great pride. This explanation
satisfied her faith. She mourned it, but without complaint, and in her
loneliness felt a sharp joy in dwelling on her humility and weakness.

“My husband!” she thought. “Since he went I have been useless. He was
my joy and my strength--everything would have happened so differently
if he had lived. My God! have You forsaken me? I promised myself to
take his place as well as I could, and I see clearly now that I am
unable.”

She abandoned herself to despair. Her distress and weariness increased.
Reaching the end of the Avenue, she asked herself if she had the
strength to continue on her way. She was out of breath, and had to stop.

“I must not be ill at their house,” she said. This was her only
desire, and to realise it she made a supreme call upon her strength.
She dragged herself to the gate, reached it at last, and outside the
grounds sat down, exhausted, on a heap of stones. There she gave
herself up to her misery and began to cry again, without even noticing
a little group of children, who came up to her, curious. As she raised
her bent head they all flew like a flock of frightened sparrows. One of
them knocking at the door of the neighboring house called:

“Mamma, Mamma! There is an old lady out here, and she is ill.” The
door opened immediately and the peasant woman appeared, carrying her
youngest babe.

“Poor lady! Why, it is Madame Guibert. What is the matter? A pain?
They come on without warning. I won’t have it said that I left you in
trouble. Your husband saved this child from typhoid.” She pointed to a
little chubby maid who was laughing. Coming nearer, she saw the tears
running down the weary face and guessed that it was nothing physical.
Out of respect she asked no questions, but continued:

“He would not take anything, the good man. He loved the poor, and above
all the children of the poor. He was always laughing. My babies were
not afraid of him, they would have eaten off his plate. ‘This is what
brave men and women are made of,’ he would say. ‘I have some of them
at home, you know!’ It is true, Madame Guibert, that we have a lot of
them. But it is just the same, having a lot. You love them all the
same. At least one wouldn’t like to lose any of them.”

By kind words she comforted Madame Guibert, who thought:

“My husband saved Alice Dulaurens too. At La Chênaie they did not honor
him any the more for that, and they don’t even remember it. The poor
forget less quickly.”

“Look at me chattering away without helping you,” continued the woman.
“Come inside; have a little glass of something, it will do you good. It
warms the heart. Come in and rest for a minute.”

Madame Guibert got up, taking the hand which the woman held out to her.

“Thank you, Fanchon, thank you. I don’t want anything. There, I am all
right again, you see. It was only a passing faintness. Your children
are lovely. May God keep you, Fanchon! I don’t want to refuse you, but
they are waiting for me at home. My daughter is very easily worried.”

“I would like to help you, Madame. One of these days I will bring you a
dozen fresh eggs. Don’t say no, it will give me so much pleasure! Come
along, children. If it had not been for the Doctor there would have
been one less. My lot wouldn’t have been complete.”

“You are kind, Fanchon. Good-bye.”

At last she was able to continue on her way to Le Maupas. She walked
slowly, stopping now and then to wipe her damp forehead, sickened at
the thought of the news she had to bring. She did not know how long it
took to go from Cognin up the hill which crosses the oakwood, but it
must have been very long, for she arrived there as the sun was touching
Mount Lépine and darting its shafts against the shield of leaves.
A hundred times she felt she would never get back. Under the trees,
however, she was grateful for the coolness of the shade and home seemed
nearer. Like a wounded animal that measures its safety by the distance
from its burrow, she made a last effort.

Marcel, leaning against the gate, was looking down the road. He saw
his poor mother coming painfully up the road, her face crimson, her
back bent, a picture of old age. He ran to her and when he came up, she
burst into sobs. “My boy, my dear boy!” she gasped.

He had to support her, and he asked simply:

“Why did you not keep the carriage? You are tired. You are hot, Mother
dear, it is not wise of you. Lean on my arm. We will go slowly.”

He helped her till she was seated in the drawing-room, wrapped in a
shawl that Paule brought. Not another word had been spoken, and already
everything had been told. With lowering brows and hard eyes Marcel was
silent. He had understood at the first look, and although the blow was
unexpected he was too proud to complain. He asked for no explanation.

His mother wiped her face, on which tears and perspiration were
mingled. Trembling she murmured:--

“Don’t regret anything. It is not worth while.”

“Why?” asked Paule surprised.

“They don’t want to separate themselves from their daughter. They think
they love her all the more because of that.”

“And Alice?” asked Marcel’s sister.

“I did not see her. She is hiding. Or they are hiding her. Her parents
had not been told about my visit. They were astonished. You would have
had to promise them to stay at Chambéry, to resign, if necessary. I
understood that a Marthenay would suit them better.”

Marcel’s eyes flashed, but all he said was “Oh!”

Madame Guibert began to tell about the humiliating way she had been
questioned. But, made ungrateful by the pain which he felt and refused
to admit, Marcel did not leave her time to do so.

“You did not understand how to talk to them! I’m sure of that. You
don’t like them and you let them see it. You hate society and you
ignore it.”

He had assumed his disdainful, haughty manner. Pride had opened the
wound. The mother answered softly, but with deep sadness in her voice:

“Your father never reproached me for that. However, I deserve it,
I daresay. But I am too old to change, and these people treated me
without consideration.”

Marcel, sullen and ashamed of himself, went out without saying anything
to lessen the harshness of his words.

Paule during this scene had stood motionless and very pale. Now she
threw herself into her mother’s arms and kissed her passionately:

“Mother, don’t cry. Oh, how I despise them! And Marcel is so unjust. It
was hateful what he said just now!”

Her eyes shone with sombre fire. Madame Guibert kept back her tears and
said:

“No, Paule, you must not despise anyone. And be patient with your
brother. Don’t you see that he is suffering? Go look for him.”




                             CHAPTER VIII

                           THE CONSPIRATORS


In the garden at Le Maupas, where the roses were fading in the shadow
of the yellowing chestnut boughs, Marcel and Jean Berlier were poring
over a map of Africa spread out on the slate table.

“Here is the road we must take,” said the Captain, and he showed a
series of little red crosses marked out on the Sahara desert.

With boyish enthusiasm Jean asked: “Then the expedition is really
decided on this time?”

“Yes, it will take two years, as far as we can judge in advance about
so long and dangerous a journey. I saw Commandant Jamy in Paris, and
he introduced me to M. Moureau. It is arranged that we shall both take
part in the mission with a couple of hundred Tirailleurs. It is being
carefully organised. The Minister of War is interested in it. But I am
afraid that we shall not go before next year.”

Marcel talked long, in a grave, distinct voice, about the reason, the
aim, and the preparation for the little expedition which was being
prepared to take the place of that which had ended so tragically
under Colonel Flathers. He explained clearly, almost eloquently, so
completely had he mastered his subject. He waxed enthusiastic over it.
Nothing seemed to interest him now except this bold journey into the
heart of Africa. He supplemented his words with expressive gestures
as he dwelt on the theme of these vast unknown lands, mysterious and
unfathomable as the ocean.

In listening to him Jean’s face took on an attentive and manly
expression. This young man of supple movements, of delicate and
handsome features, who smiled and joked unceasingly, who pleased women,
and whom one would have pictured at first sight as completely in his
element in a drawing-room flirting and making himself agreeable,
revealed under the influence of a serious interest his really strong
and virile character. Knowing him better, his friend Marcel Guibert had
never judged him differently, and when he heard him spoken of as the
lady’s man of the garrison, he was astonished and contented himself
with answering, “You don’t know him.”

Madame Guibert now appeared on the steps.

“Not a word,” said the Captain, quickly putting his fingers to his lips.

“She knows nothing?” whispered Jean.

“No, she will know only too soon.”

Madame Guibert looked at the garden, but did not see the two young
men. Thinking herself alone, she removed her spectacles which she had
put on to do some fancy work, took out her handkerchief and passed
it slowly over her eyes. Tired, she leaned on the wooden balustrade,
which was covered with a sad mantle of withered branches of jasmine and
wistaria. She let her eyes rest on the familiar landscape in mournful
reverie.

The fading evening dyed the delicate sky with lilac and rose. The
air was soft, but its freshness announced the advent of autumn. The
countryside was smiling with the melancholy charm of a dying person who
still hopes to live. It showed its bare fields and its stripped vines,
with an air resembling that of a prodigal who has given away everything
and still wishes to give more. All that was of any use was gone, only
beauty was left. The woods but half hid their mysteries now, and their
green and gold foliage seemed scarcely able to bear up against the rays
of the sun. Round the walls of the house a few overblown roses let
their heavy petals fall in the light wind. But at the top of a meadow
on the hill, standing out blackly against the clear sky, two oxen
majestically drew the plough which prepared for the coming harvests. In
the peaceful decay of nature came the promise of new youth.

A chestnut falling at his feet made Marcel shiver. All at once he
understood the sadness of the beauty to whose entrancing grace he had
been yielding himself. He smelt the autumn and the dying day. And as he
looked at her, above all others dear to him, his mother, leaning on the
balcony and gathering together in her mind all her flock of scattered
children, he realised the strength of his filial affection and felt
at the same time that superstitious, piercing dread inspired in us
at times by the insecurity of the lives of those we love. Jean saw
his friend’s face become clouded and he pointed out to him the plough
patiently fertilising the ground, as if thereby bidding him trust in
Providence.

Slowly Madame Guibert went into the house.

“Poor dear mother,” thought Marcel. “How often I have made you anxious
about me. And you will be anxious again. This map lying before me,
silent and indifferent, holds the secret of future terrors for you! For
the mother’s milk you have given me, for the soul that your soul has
transmitted to me, for my childhood and youth, may you be blessed! I
love you. But, if I must go, forgive me....”

A young girl’s fair face rose up in his memory. After the refusal he
had seen nothing of Alice Dulaurens. Several times he had leaped over
the little barrier separating the tall trees of La Chênaie from the
Chaloux road. There, under that ancient shade, he had boldly waited
for her. Knowing that she loved him, he wanted above all things to
speak to her, to exchange a promise with her. The glory he was going
forth to seek and her patient waiting would give her to him. But,
either by chance or because she was watched, she did not come.

Was he to go thus? In a few days his leave, for an extension of which
he had refused to ask, would be up and he must go to Oran, where Jean
Berlier, who had been gazetted to the first regiment of Tirailleurs,
was to precede him. A hundred impossible ideas crowded into his mind,
and he chafed against his slavery as a young horse champs its bit.

While he was thinking how he could manage to see the girl whom he
considered his fiancée with all the obstinate perseverance of a man of
action, his friend, Jean, got up.

“I want to say good-bye to your mother before I go,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” replied Marcel, also rising.

And suddenly making up his mind to speak, he added, almost in a whisper:

“Listen; I _must_ see Mademoiselle Dulaurens. You can help me.
Will you?”

The two men were united by a strong friendship. The one had thrown into
the relationship the tender indulgence of an elder brother, the other
the warm admiration of a younger one. Both gave to it the dignity
which distinguishes brotherly love. By degrees they had drawn from it
an incentive to nobler feelings. It gave them also that peace which
is born of mutual trust and similarity of nature and tastes. But they
did not confide much in each other. Therefore Jean was surprised to
hear his friend tell his secret, though he had long since guessed
it. A discreet observer, he had uneasily followed the domestic drama
which was being played at La Chênaie, and had been a witness to
Madame Dulaurens’s desperate efforts to champion the cause of Armand
de Marthenay as a suitor for her daughter’s hand. Knowing Marcel’s
concentrated strength and pride, he was more interested in this passion
whose violent despair frightened him, than in the slight diversion that
his own love affairs gave him. He knew what this wild desire to take
part in the Sahara expedition meant, this feverish need for activity,
this new ambition which had suddenly stirred his friend. But Marcel
never betrayed himself. There must, therefore, be some weighty reason
to make him decide to speak, and that was why this question alarmed his
friend.

Hiding his thoughts, Jean asked:

“Can’t you go to La Chênaie? There is nothing simpler.”

Marcel turned on him an eager, penetrating look.

“You know very well that I cannot,” he said. After a moment’s silence
he continued:

“Nevertheless,--I must see her.”

“To elope with her?” said Jean with his subtle smile, as if he were
trying for the last time to turn the affair into a joke. But he
received only a disdainful answer.

“Look at her well and you won’t talk that way. I must see her before
leaving for perhaps many years. Her happiness and mine are both at
stake. If it were only a question of time, I could go away without
looking back, taking my sorrow with me. She wants to be sure of the
future, she wants to know that it belongs to her securely. She can be
my wife, if she wishes it. I only ask her to have the courage to wait.”

“That is the hardest thing,” said Jean, who had no illusions about
Alice’s character.

“It is the easiest.”

“Yes, for you, who are used to dangers and obstacles. But for her?”

“But if she loves me?” asked Marcel simply, and in so quiet a tone that
no suspicion of conceit could be read into his words.

“Ah,” murmured Jean, thinking: “She does not understand the meaning of
love. Isabelle Orlandi is marrying her Monsieur Landeau because she
loves luxury. Alice Dulaurens is going to marry Monsieur de Marthenay
because she is weak and because her mother wants a titled son-in-law
under her thumb. Young girls nowadays have no strong affection and
nobody to teach them.”

But he did not dare to think aloud. He read on his friend’s broad and
intelligent forehead, in his ardent eyes, the patent signs of his love.

“Then you must absolutely have this interview?”

“Absolutely.”

Jean made no further objections. As he was thinking of a plan, Marcel
began:

“You are an intimate friend of the Dulaurens family. It would be very
simple for you to say a word for me to Mademoiselle Dulaurens. I would
not ask you to do that for me if there were anything wrong about it.
I would have asked my sister to go, if Paule could go back to La
Chênaie--after the refusal.”

He had to swallow his pride in saying this. Raising his head, he went
on with a disdainful air.

“This refusal is unjust. Her parents have no right to use their
authority just to satisfy their prejudice and selfishness, and to break
their daughter’s heart for their own vanity. Nobody has more reverence
for their authority than I, when it is exercised wisely and justly.
Paule saw her friend at church. She could not speak to her, but she
noticed that she was looking pale, languid, and despairing. I must
speak to her. There is no treachery in it, no loss of respect for her.
You must realise this before answering me.”

“Very well,” said Jean. And after reflecting a second or two he added:

“I repeat your words. Think of her face, her innocent eyes. She would
not meet you.”

Marcel was thoughtful for a few moments.

“You are right,” he agreed. “Let us think no more about it I will go
away without seeing her again.”

He made no other complaint, but the simplicity of his words touched his
friend’s heart and although he thought it would certainly be better for
him to go away without seeing her, he knew Marcel was so unhappy that
he tried to think of some way to help him.

“Look here,” he said. “Leave it to me, I will tell you at the proper
time, and you shall see her again.”

“How will you manage it?” asked Marcel rather uneasily.

“She shall meet you without having been told. It will be your business
to keep her.”

Tired of discussing a serious topic so long, Jean assumed a lighter
tone.

“Heavens, it will serve them right! De Marthenay irritates me, and the
Dulaurenses are such awful snobs! It isn’t perhaps quite the correct
thing, but it is just, and I am delighted to be able to pay them back.”
Already he was thinking of a plan which would be simple and easy to
carry out.

“You wanted to see my mother?” said Marcel. “Let us go back to the
house.”

The two went up the steps and found Madame Guibert and Paule working by
the light of the dying day. The former’s face brightened as the door
opened on her son; but the girl’s gaze was fixed on the little flannel
she was embroidering for her faraway nephew.

“I have come to say good-bye,” said Jean.

“Are you not going to wait for your friend? Must you leave so soon?”
Madame Guibert asked him, with real regret, for she loved his buoyant
youth and his delightful gaiety and did not fail to distinguish
between the real Jean and his reputation. She was grateful to him for
distracting Marcel better than she knew how or dared to do; for she
could only watch like a mourner her son’s heavy grief, half afraid of
his gloomy pride.

“I sail for Marseilles in three days, Madame. My leave is up three days
earlier than Marcel’s.”

At last Paule raised her head. Jean, who was staring at her, could
read a reproach in her dark eyes. But it is always possible to be
dubious about a look. There are quick, fugitive expressions, whose
interpretation is mysterious, and we prefer to refuse to understand
them if they do not fall in with our views or may cause us uneasiness.
This girl with the serious face and well-balanced carriage, whose
somewhat severe grace hinted at a reserve of passion, at once attracted
and disconcerted Jean. He had looked forward to hearing her speak
kindly to him, and her reticence paralysed him. Her approval and
regard would have raised and strengthened him, but he knew that to be
worthy of it he would have to undertake something great, and to feel
great emotions, yet he was afraid of what he inwardly called “living
on the heights.” Above all things he avoided thinking about the
ambiguous impression which she made upon him. How many lives pass away
misunderstood, without a realisation of the secret of those affinities
which might have modified them, and of which even the conjectured
strength arouses alarm in the majority of mankind.

Madame Guibert accompanied the young man as far as the courtyard. At
the foot of the steps she said quickly in a low voice, as he stood near
her:

“Look after _him_ this winter, Jean. I ask you to do this for me.”

He glanced gently at the old lady. Her confidence touched him.

“I promise you I shall. To me he is like an elder brother.”

And turning round he saw and admired on the veranda steps the graceful,
clearly-cut silhouette of Paule in her mourning clothes. But she was
looking straight ahead of her and the roses of the autumn sky were
fading away over the hill....

That evening Jean Berlier dined at La Chênaie. They expected Isabelle
Orlandi who was quite at home there. Never had she flirted more
audaciously or shown more disregard for the proprieties than she did
now on the eve of her wedding. At this time, M. Landeau, profiting by
a rise in the markets and discovering tactfully the modern method of
winning hearts, made love from afar by piling up a great deal of money,
the use of which his fiancée was enjoying in anticipation. His letters
contained short but significant allusions to his financial success,
whose potency as a love-charm he cleverly understood.

That evening Isabelle disappeared with the young soldier to a sofa
hidden by a thick group of palms and ferns. To give her parties an air
of gaiety and brightness, Madame Dulaurens tolerated these intimacies
when they did not go too far.

Jean needed a feminine accomplice to realise his plan, which was
simplicity itself. His idea was to get Alice to go at a certain time to
a little oakwood, where she would suddenly meet Marcel Guibert coming
along the Chaloux road. But he could not himself ask the girl to go for
a walk in the lovely freshness of the woods. He needed an ally whose
discretion could be relied upon.

“Here is one perhaps,” he thought, looking at Isabelle. “But is she to
be trusted?”

As he had very little choice, he decided to risk it.

“What do you think of the dragoon?” he asked his fair companion,
indicating the Viscount de Marthenay, whom they could see through the
greenery, showing off his paces before Madame Dulaurens, while the
unhappy Alice, bending over an illustrated book, leaves of which she
was forgetting to turn, tried not to see him.

Isabelle laughed.

“The dragoon? He is Alice’s de Marthenay. Every girl has her own.”

“Will you help me to score against him?”

“I certainly will. It will remind us of the Battle of Flowers.”

“Well, come here to-morrow--about four o’clock. I shall be here.”

“If you will be here, it goes without saying that I shall come,” said
Isabelle.

“You must tell your fair young friend, whose cheeks have been so pale:
‘You must go out and get some fresh country air. You have been shut up
too long.’”

“I will tell my fair friend that she must go and get the fresh air,
etc.,” repeated Isabelle.

“And we shall take her to the oakwood.”

“To the oakwood we shall take her.”

“At a sign from me you will leave her.”

“Is this a song?”

“We shall leave her alone. And if you should see or understand
anything, you swear you will keep it secret?”

“But I don’t understand!”

“That is just what I want.”

“Do tell me, at least, what shall I see?”

“Daughter of Eve! Can you keep a secret?”

“If you tell it to me, yes.”

“It is a secret which is not mine. If you tell it you will betray me,”
said Jean.

With her lovely dark eyes full of passion, she looked intently at him.

“Jean,” she said, “my dear Jean, I am not worth much and you think even
less of me. To please you I would face any danger ... and even Mrs.
Grundy!”

“Above all Mrs. Grundy, if you will.”

“But I do mean it. Ah, if you wished it, I would go to the end of the
world with you!”

“Without luxuries?” he asked, giving a sceptical smile.

And with a nervous laugh, which showed all her white teeth, she
answered:

“As naked as a babe!”

They both shivered at their own reckless talk.

He was filled with sadness at the sight of this lovely form, whose
beauties he could so well imagine; while she, just about to enter the
married state as one might throw oneself over a precipice, felt a kind
of voluptuous faintness at thus treading on the brink.

He was silent, but in his tense features she read her own power. She
even dared to take his hand and said, in Italian to hide her boldness,
“_Io vi amo_.”

And Jean forgot about Marcel and the rendez-vous. But his nature was
really refined, loyal, and almost reserved, despite her influence upon
it because of her expressed admiration for him and her own fascinating
allurements. And so, in love as he was for the moment, he did not say
the words that Isabelle was hoping to hear.

“So you would give up Monsieur Landeau for me?” were his words.

She thought him rather dense, and concluded hastily that his
impertinences were only external and his boldness mere bravado. But he
pleased her the more for that. She herself retained in that passionate
heart of hers a certain childishness, which was touched to sympathy by
the unexpected virtue which she found in him. But she promised herself
to play a much more important part in the drama. Soon recovering from
her surprise, she answered:

“I should give up nothing at all. Why should that middle-aged man stand
in our way?” And again she laughed, an ambiguous laugh. He understood,
and in spite of himself he blushed--which annoyed her.

Behind the plants they saw Alice get up. The girl crossed the
drawing-room wide-eyed, as though she were walking in her sleep. She
was wearing a white linen dress, which suited her fair beauty. Isabelle
took in the details of the toilette like an inventory. Made cruel by
her inspection, she murmured: “That stuff was expensive and the cut is
perfect. Could you offer me anything like that after the ceremony?”

He came back to realities and blamed himself inwardly at having shown
such stupidity.

“On my pay?” he asked.

“What do you think? I adore glitter.”

“All that glitters is not gold.”

“That’s true. There are such things as diamonds and precious stones!”

Rather scornfully he agreed:

“Yes, everyone turns away from life and tries to forget it. Your
mother has her dog, my uncle his roses and you--your dresses. Love
comes afterwards, as best it can.”

“At last, Jean, you are learning wisdom!”

With a lightened heart he took up the subject of his plan again.

“Then you will keep the secret that you will guess to-morrow?” he asked.

“If I tell it, I consent to love Monsieur Landeau.”

“Will you be serious?”

“I am speaking very seriously. My fiancé is the most serious thing
in the world. Well, listen, if I tell your secret it means that I no
longer like you.”

“Ah, no, because that might happen any minute!”

“You ungrateful wretch!” said Isabelle. She pointed to him, as though
showing him to an imaginary gallery:

“He is as handsome as Apollo and does not know it.”

She raised her hand.

“I swear it. There, are you satisfied? Do speak!”

He still hesitated, then made up his mind.

“My friend, Marcel Guibert, has something to tell Alice Dulaurens. He
is going to wait for her to-morrow in the oakwood.”

“Ah,” said Isabelle, deeply interested. “But they don’t want _us_
for that.”

“Wait a minute. Alice knows nothing about it. If she knew, she wouldn’t
go.”

“Stupid creature! But you are quite right. Nothing about her astonishes
me any more. She is capable of anything foolish.”

“Say rather, of anything timid. She has a beautiful timid soul.”

“I should rather say she is careful. But she is rich. She can choose
her own husband. In these days that is a rare luxury. How could she
help liking Captain Guibert better than that stupid, arrogant de
Marthenay? I like him very much, almost as much as I like you. Only he
makes me afraid. I always think he is going to scold me.”

“Don’t you deserve it?”

“I do deserve it. Scold me if you like, but not too much! The dragoon
is very stupid. And when a man is that, he is unbearable.”

Madame Dulaurens was hovering round now and came up to their little
retreat, thinking that this _tête-à-tête_ had lasted quite long
enough.

“Alice is not with you?” she asked.

“She has just gone out of the drawing-room, Madame Dulaurens. There she
is, coming back.”

When she had left them Jean said quickly, to put an end to the
conversation.

“Madame Dulaurens does not want to be separated from her daughter. You
understand?”

“Ah,” said Isabelle. “So poor Alice is to marry Monsieur de Marthenay.
She has no more will-power than a hen in a shower of rain.” And with a
sudden quaint outburst she added:

“Long live forbidden loves! What will you give me as a reward for my
help?”

“Ask and you shall receive!”

She looked slyly at him as if to provoke him.

“A kiss from your lips, dear Sir.”

His innocence was routed. He retorted at once:

“On yours, fair lady.”

It was her turn to blush. They both laughed, with that slight
embarrassment which accompanies the thought of coming pleasure, and
leaving their hiding-place they mixed with the general company.




                              CHAPTER IX

                             THE FAREWELL


The next day everything passed off as arranged. Isabelle Orlandi and
Jean Berlier took Alice Dulaurens to the park, as far as the oakwood
where Marcel had been instructed to wait for her. At the bend of the
path they left them face to face, while they continued their walk under
the trees, glorious in their autumn dress.

The terrified Alice put her hand on her heart. Her first thought was to
fly, but her legs were weak and her breath was gone.

“Stay, do stay,” said Marcel in a grave, pleading voice, which she did
not know. “Forgive my boldness. I am going away to Algiers and I wasn’t
brave enough to leave without seeing you once again.”

“Ah,” she said, pale and trembling. “What will my mother say?”

Her mother was only her second thought, but he imagined it her first
and frowned jealously. However, he went on with the same tender
assurance.

“Alice, I have come to tell you that I love you. Paule told me that
you loved me. Is it true? I want to hear it from your own lips.”

He saw her tremble and put her two hands to her throat as if she were
choking. Her cheeks were colorless and her eyes looked down unseeing on
the dead leaves which strewed the path. The oak-branches swayed in the
wind with a mournful clash. A pink glow in the sky, appearing through
the straight columns of the ancient trees, announced the end of the day.

Her voice was like an infinitely tender plaint as she murmured, “I
cannot tell you.”

It was her avowal, the only one she thought permissible.

Touched to the heart, Marcel looked with new eyes on this frightened
child, who, only a few feet away from him, a white shawl round her
shoulders, stood out like a ghost under the dome of trees. Her long
lashes drooped over her blue eyes. Behind her through the branches
he saw the setting sun like a huge conflagration, the dark trunks of
the oak-trees outlined against it. And the shades of the leaves were
glowing and sinister, like gold and blood.

“Alice,” he said again, “if you love me as I love you, promise you will
be my wife.”

At last she looked up in the young man’s proud face and understood How
much he had gone through for her, and her eyes were wet.

“I cannot ... Marcel ... My parents....” he could say no more--her
tears spoke for her. He came nearer and took her hand. She did not draw
it away.

In a firm, compelling voice he continued:

“Don’t be unhappy, Alice. You will gain their consent. Be brave and
strong enough to wait; time will help us. I only ask you to be patient.
I shall do great things for you. I am setting out on an expedition to
Africa. I shall win you, my beloved.”

In alarm she begged him not to go, her fears betraying her love.

“No, no, I won’t let you, I won’t let you risk your life. Ah, if
you--loved me, you would not go.”

“I am going because I love you, Alice.”

“You don’t know me,” she cried. “I am afraid--I am afraid of
everything. I am a poor little wretch. Oh, my head is so heavy!”

She laid her free hand first on her forehead and then on her bosom.

“My heart is so heavy,” she murmured in a low voice.

“Alice,” he said passionately, “don’t be afraid. I love you, I will
protect you.”

And bending down he touched with his lips the little trembling hand
that he had kept in his own. His kiss thrilled her. She sighed.

“Let us go back. This is not right.”

“Not right when I love you so much? Am I not your betrothed?”

“It is not right,” she repeated.

They looked at each other closely.

The evening sky was fading. A blue mist quivered over the park, under
the trees and across the lawns. It was the hour of mystery, when
everything is saddened by the fear of death. Daylight still lingered,
but a delicate, wasted daylight, languorous in its grace. And the path
which disappeared into the wood became in turn violet and rose-color.

In the young girl’s eyes he saw the reflection of the setting sun. All
the melancholy of dying nature was held in this living mirror.

Never had he felt so clearly the weakness of his loved one. Never had
she felt the chaste desire to cling to his strength as she did now. And
yet, as he drew her to him and bent to kiss her, she gently pushed him
away and whispered for the third time, “Oh, no, it is not right.” This
trembling chastity, which disguised her affection so little, filled him
with a feeling of deep respect.

“Alice,” he said again, “you must swear you will be my wife.”

But she answered as she had answered before:

“I cannot do it. It is my parents’ wish....”

Astonished at being unable to get more out of the interview which he
had so ardently desired, and which meant so much for their future,
Marcel went on firmly, certain of her love and confident that he could
convince her:

“Alice, Alice, I am going away--perhaps for several years. But what
are two or three years when one loves? If you love, it is forever. I
want to take your promise away with me. It will be my safeguard and my
strength. Alice, I love you more than my life. Or rather I should say
that I cannot live without you--obstacles are nothing when you love.
Swear that you will keep your heart for me, when I am gone, and this
little hand that you have given me, which lies so icy-cold in mine.”

She stood speechless and confused before him. Her life had passed
without initiative. She did not know if she had any will. Even her love
had taken possession of her imperceptibly and hurt her by its violence,
for it seemed to her excessive and forbidden.

With infinite compassion he looked at her, so pale and weak, his only
thought to protect her against the attacks of fate. But as she still
kept silence, he became insistent:

“Alice, I love you. The day is ending, you must go home. This autumn
air is cold. Will you let me go without a word, without a grain of
hope?”

It was the thrilling hour when all nature gathers herself together
before mingling with the shadows, before sinking into death. The last
rays of the setting sun still lit up Alice’s pure face and golden hair.
And her white shawl made a light spot among the trees.

She still stood silent and motionless. She foresaw both the
impossibility of the struggle with her mother and the equal
impossibility of marriage with M. de Marthenay. She did not know how
much we can shape our destiny when we dare to grasp it with a firm
hand. Love was opening all the great gateways of life to her, and she
was terrified. What had she done to God that her choice should depend
on herself alone? Why could she not follow a smooth and easy path? Thus
paralysed with fear she could make no choice.

Why did he not talk about his grief? She was so agitated that she would
have been moved to pity and would have given her promise. If he had
tried to draw her to him as he had already done, she would not have
refused him. She would at last have laid her head on his brave heart.

But he wanted her as a free gift. He waited and as this wait was
prolonged he looked more and more pityingly at the poor child whose
love was so wavering. Neither shame, nor shyness, nor natural reserve
could explain her silence. Their case was too grave that she should
hesitate to speak out if she wished to. The obstacles which separated
them were only the barriers of vanity and selfishness, not difficult
to overcome. She loved, but still she said nothing. He recognised that
their paths were not the same. He drew himself up to his full height in
disdainful pity. He was able, however, to master his pride sufficiently
to say gently to her:

“No, Alice, don’t promise me anything. I give you back the word that
you gave Paule for me. You haven’t the strength to love.”

In a firm, even voice he added, as he let her little, cold, unresisting
hand fall:

“Good-bye, Mademoiselle Dulaurens, we shall never meet again.”

She saw him disappear down the path where the shadows of the dying day
were beginning to fade. He did not turn back. He was already out of
sight and yet she still looked after him. The woods were quivering in
the evening breeze.

A leaf fell from a tree and in its flight it touched Alice’s hair. At
this foreboding of winter she felt death round her--within her.

Like two gay dancing phantoms Isabelle and Jean appeared under the
oaks. They found her rooted to the spot where Marcel had left her.
When they were about to speak to her, she fled without a word and
ran towards the house to hide her misery. It did not occur to her to
tell her trouble to Jean Berlier, who could still have saved her from
disaster. She reached her room, hid her face in her hands, and wept.
But even in her grief she did not think of struggling and gave herself
up to the fate that she felt to be inevitable.

After Alice’s flight, Isabelle and Jean looked at each other
astonished. “I don’t understand it,” he cried. “I understand quite
well,” answered she. “Here’s another who is afraid. We are all alike
nowadays. We want money and no risks. I know only one girl who would go
to the ends of the world for love, in a dress that cost twopence.”

“Who is that?”

“Paule Guibert.”

Before the words had passed her lips he had suddenly seen a vision
of Paule in her mourning dress. Isabelle felt instinctively what
was passing in his mind. Jealously she came nearer and in her most
seductive voice said:

“What about my commission? Have you forgotten it?”

She offered her lips. He remembered, and as the colors of the dying day
mingled he gave her the promised commission under the trees.

Marcel never looked back till he arrived at the ascent to Le Maupas.
There he turned round and saw La Chênaie lying in the shadow, while
the mountains were still splendid in the light. A long, fleecy cloud
trailed half way up their sides like a torn scarf. From the dying sun
they caught a tint of rose so fine and delicate that it brought to the
mind’s eye a goddess of the Alps half hidden amid gauze and muslin.

He gave himself the cruel satisfaction of waiting till the shadows,
falling on the mountain tops, had destroyed this airy fantasy and
blotted out these delicate colors. In the sadness of surrounding nature
he seemed to breathe more freely. Quickly he crossed the half-stripped
wood, through whose trunks patches of fiery red sky could be seen.
Round him the owls, those sinister birds of night and autumn, began
to call to each other with their mournful screams, like the agonising
shrieks of victims, which strike terror into the hearts of belated
travellers.

He found his sister at the gate. Feeling anxious about him, she had
come to meet him. Paule knew at a glance the result of the interview.

“Oh,” was all she said.

In a word he told her.

“We are not of the same race,” he said.

She took his arm and was bending forward to kiss him when she stopped.

“Listen,” she said.

“Owls! The wood is full of them, Marcel. Let us go away. They make me
shudder. The peasants say they are a sign of death.”

He shrugged his shoulders indifferently.




                               CHAPTER X

                          MARCEL’S DEPARTURE


A family meal before a departure reminds us in its sadness of the first
meal we have together after the final disappearance of an habitual
guest. If no one is missing as yet, still joy has fled. Everyone tries
vainly to brighten it, and of this touching, fruitless effort is born a
deeper sadness.

Thus the dining-room at Le Maupas, in spite of the October sun which
shone into it, was silent and mournful. Marcel was going away at
nightfall in Trélaz’s carriage to catch the six o’clock train at the
station. When the conversation languished nobody thought of taking it
up again. With a few unimportant words, spoken without enthusiasm, it
would falter back to life, only to die out once more. Marie, the old
servant, had prepared Marcel’s favorite dishes. Carrying them back
to the kitchen almost untouched, she murmured in a cross voice which
expressed her own sorrow:

“It isn’t right--it isn’t right. They want to starve themselves to
death!”

After lunch, Marcel went out with his sister.

“I want to see our old walks again,” he said.

Through the vineyards on the hill they climbed up to the chestnut-trees
at Vimines, under the shade of which grows thick moss where as children
they used to gather mushrooms. From the border of the woods they looked
out on Lake Bourget in its mountain basin. To appreciate its wild
beauty at its best one must see it in the evening.

“Now let’s go and see the waterfall,” said Marcel.

He wanted to assure himself, as it were, before leaving, of the
existence of all those quiet and lonely places which had helped to form
his character. From Vimines, whose pointed steeple commands the hill,
one comes down through the vineyards and orchards to the waterfall at
Coux by a zig-zag path from which are to be seen several very fine
views. Opposite lies a chaos of mountains, boldly scaled by rows of
pines; on the left, the Nivolet with rocky peaks bathed in a bluish
light; on the right, the openings of the valley of the Echelles and La
Chartreuse. Marcel stopped short when he saw, between two golden-leaved
beeches which framed a picture of savage loveliness, the long
waterfall, slender and white, which fell a hundred feet and shone again
in a silvery dust in the sunshine. He smiled happily.

“It is beautiful in its lonely surroundings,” he said. “Don’t let us go
down any further. We have still to go to the Montcharvin woods and the
ravine of Forezan.”

These were some of the old possessions of Le Maupas, which had been
given up when the crash came. Because they were nearer home and, from
time immemorial, familiar sights to him, he loved them best. And now
though they were sold, they had not lost their charm for him. The
beauty of the earth is not to be bought and sold. It belongs to the
discoverer who can understand it and enjoy it.

Le Forezan is a deep valley whose steep sides are covered with a ragged
growth of brushwood. Here and there the sides are less abrupt, and
it is possible to climb down to the stream which runs at the bottom.
There, under a far-stretching arch of greenery, are peace, silence, and
forgetfulness.

Marcel, who was walking ahead, turned back and saw that his sister was
caught in the creepers which crossed the path. Before coming to help
her he cried:

“How pretty you look in those bushes!”

“Come and help me instead of talking nonsense,” said Paule. But he did
not hurry. The girl’s natural grace harmonised wonderfully with this
fresh virgin landscape. He could not help admiring the suppleness of
the movements she made to disentangle herself, and the bright flush of
health that the exercise brought to her cheeks. When he came up to her,
she was quite free from the snare which had held her. “Too late!” she
cried.

“Bravo, Paule! You wouldn’t be afraid in Cochin-China or the Tonkin
forests. You will see them some day. You belong to the same race as
your brothers.”

“What, I?” she said, the fire in her eyes dying out. “I shall live and
die at Le Maupas.”

They came back from the valley through the ash wood. These trees with
their light trunks reared their heads proudly on high, wearing as a
crown the mass of branches from which the autumn wind was tearing the
leaves. Half stripped, they showed their shapeliness in all their
youthful health and strength, and thousands of uplifted arms waved
peacefully. Like naked hamadryads they betrayed the secret of their
forms. The scanty leaves which still adorned them, were ruddy gold,
almost as rich as the fallen ones which thickly carpeted the soil
below. Evening came on and all the wood was bathed in a violet mist,
which gave to it the mysterious aspect of a sacred grove.

Turned to the west on one side, on the other looking over meadows and
vineyards, the farm of Montcharvin reflected in its windows the glow
of the setting sun. This spacious house was built amid the ruins of
an old castle, of which one dismantled tower and a Romanesque portico
were all that remained. This portico, unprovided with a door and now
quite useless, looked on to a roofless shed where old plough-shares
were kept, and beyond, by reason of an abrupt descent, to a distant
landscape which was framed in its arch. This arrangement called to mind
the pictures of the old Italian masters, who, in order, doubtless, to
sum up the multiform beauty of the world, used to supplement their
human figures with a scene from nature, glimpsed between the columns of
a palace or under the arches of a cloister.

Marcel and Paule skirted the old building and, following a screen of
trees at the edge of a field which hid the deep valley of Forezan, they
stopped in front of a fallen trunk, a natural bench which had been left
there for years. Of one accord they sat down.

They saw the shades of evening falling over the land. They saw the path
which they had followed and the dead leaves of the woods turning pink
and violet. Two bullocks drawing a cart full of milk-cans passed in
front of them, and, as they crossed a band of sunshine, a light haze
could be plainly seen rising from their nostrils at every breath and
mounting upwards. Peace filled the countryside, which was preparing
for its winter rest with all the sadness of its shorn meadows and
despoiled woods.

Marcel took his sister’s hand. Suddenly at his touch she burst into
tears. They had too many sensations in their hearts at this moment of
leave-taking. He was thinking of Alice and her weakness, Paule was
thinking of him. For a moment he waited till the tears he had caused
her to shed were dried.

“Listen,” he said at last. “You must watch over mother. I shall be away
for a long time perhaps.”

Uneasily she felt a foreboding of some new misfortune, but immediately
she mastered herself.

“You will come home next year from Algiers, won’t you?”

He looked at her tenderly. “I don’t know, Paule dear, I am taking part
in an expedition which is preparing to cross the Sahara.”

“Oh,” she cried, “I was sure of it. You ask too much of our courage,
Marcel. Mother is old and very worn. She feels our troubles as much as
we do ourselves. We must make it easy for her.”

Looking at the peaceful fields, he thought how sweet it would be to
stay near his mother and sister. But it was only a passing regret, and
he went on:

“Are you not there, you, our sister of charity? I have to go far away.
I must forget. Don’t talk about it now. The Moureau expedition is not
yet ready. It won’t set out for a year, or more perhaps. I am telling
you, because I have no secrets from you. Mother will know about it soon
enough.”

“Will this expedition take long?” she asked simply.

“No one can say exactly. Probably eighteen months.”

She tried to master her sorrow, but overwhelmed she burst into tears.

“You don’t know how much Mother and I love you. Oh, if only we could
have given our hearts to her who didn’t dare to assert her will, she at
least might have been able to do what we cannot, to keep you here.”

He took her in his arms and pressed her to his heart. Sure of this
love, whose strength gave him courage, he waited till her despair had
passed. But he did not mention Alice. That name should never cross his
lips again. He only made a contemptuous allusion to his love.

“Don’t let us speak of that, dear. Such a marriage would only have
hampered me. A woman has no right to cramp her husband’s career. What
is a love worth that is not strong enough to bear separation and sorrow
and to make a sacrifice? You will stay with Mother. My destiny was to
be a globe-trotter--worse luck!”

He felt his sister’s form grow stiff in his arms.

“I was not thinking of myself,” she said, and in this phrase lay a
whole world of inward rebellion, which he divined and understood.

She had known sorrow too young, at an age when life was opening with
all its charm, and since her father’s death she had experienced much
base ingratitude and much insulting patronage to both her mother and
herself. From these experiences, she had gained the strength of a
stoic, but a bitter pride as well. She had already lost all hope for
the future. She tried to forget herself, as she believed herself to be
forgotten. The love for her mother and brother satisfied her passion
for devotion. Uplifted by her dignity and her contempt for society, she
did not seek to analyse the vague feelings which were surging in her
ardent heart.

Marcel knew she had the same nature as he, little inclined to talk
about self or to worry about her own affairs. He only tried to distract
her and spoke with deep affection.

“Paule, don’t despair. One of these days you will be happy. You deserve
it so much!”

But she turned the conversation:

“Your trip to Paris was about the expedition, wasn’t it? You never told
me about it,” said Paule.

“I did not keep you in the dark long, Paule, not long. I had to
fight against all kinds of intrigues and competition. At last I got
permission, both for Jean Berlier and myself, to join the expedition.”

“Oh, so M. Berlier is going too?”

“Yes, and he will come back a captain and with the Legion of Honour. It
will certainly develop him. The desert widens one’s heart and brain, as
the sea does. You don’t think of love-making any more! But why have you
left off calling him Jean?”

She made no reply. He looked at her, and then getting up said:

“Let us go back. It is growing dark. We must not leave Mother alone any
longer.”

Madame Guibert was seated at the door, waiting for them. With her old
hands she was knitting some woollen stockings for a farmer’s little
girl. She had put on her spectacles to see her needles. She often
lifted her eyes towards the avenue. This side of the house was covered
with the five-leaved ivy whose scarlet color was deepened by the rays
of the dying sun.

As soon as she saw Marcel and Paule she smiled at them. But as they
were coming up the staircase she quickly took off her spectacles to
wipe her eyes.

“At last!” she cried.

Her son kissed her.

“We stayed too long in the Montcharvin woods. But here we are, Mother.
Are you not afraid of the cold? It is getting late to be out of doors.”

And as they went into the house, the young man turned to look at the
neighboring meadows, the chestnut avenue, and the open gate. Knowing
how things stood with his family, he was aware that they would have to
think of selling Le Maupas, unless his brother Étienne made a fortune
in Tonkin. Here he had spent his childhood, and formed his soul. From
this country--now all pink and violet--his memories came back to him
at his call. They came to him from all sides, like a flight of birds
clearly defined in the setting sun. Marcel shut the door. In the
drawing-room he went and sat beside his mother on a low seat, leaned on
her shoulder, and took her hand.

“I am so comfortable here,” he said in a caressing voice which was a
contrast to his determined face.

For the first time he noticed the hand that he was holding in his own,
a poor, worn, rough hand with fingers swollen and ringless, which
betrayed a life of toil and old age. Madame Guibert followed her son’s
eyes--and understood.

“I was obliged to leave off wearing my wedding ring, it hurt me. I wore
your father’s for a long time, but the gold grew so thin that one day
it broke in two like glass.” And she added, as if talking to herself:

“It did not matter. Only our feelings matter. And even death cannot
alter them.”

Marcel looked at the portrait of his mother that he knew so well. It
represented a woman, pretty and slender, looking like a shy young girl,
whose tiny, tapering fingers held a flower, in the quaint old-fashioned
way. Then he bent down and put his lips to the withered hand.

In memory he saw again the old lady, worn out and humiliated, coming
home from La Chênaie after the refusal, and he thought of the rough way
he had received her. Then with the rather haughty grace which lent so
much value to his words of love, he said:

“My dear Mother, I have sometimes spoken rudely to you.”

She drew her hand gently away and stroked his cheek, smiling a sad
yet bright smile, which told the whole story of a soul purified by
suffering.

“Be quiet,” she murmured, brokenly. “I forbid you to blame yourself.
Every day I thank God for the children He has given me.”

They were silent. Minutes passed, swiftly, irrevocably.

The approaching separation drew nearer, and they enjoyed to the full
the happiness of their last moments together.

Nothing brings two lives closer than having suffered in common. When
would they ever be together again as they were now in the golden charm
of autumn, facing the fading trees, whose dying beauty could be seen
through the window? Of these three souls, two had the presentiment that
these hours would never come back. Madame Guibert sought in vain her
usual bravery in farewell moments. Marcel was thinking of the solitudes
of Africa which sometimes keep those who visit them; but, ashamed
of his weakness, he banished with cheery words of hope these dark
forebodings which cast shadows over the little country drawing-room.

And now Farmer Trélaz came to tell them that the carriage was at the
door. The luggage was stowed away in it--a lunch basket not being
forgotten for the long journey to Marseilles.

It was quite dark before the ancient vehicle started.

At Chambéry Paule noticed Madame Dulaurens and her daughter under an
arcade. She saw Alice grow deadly pale; but turning to her brother, she
was surprised to see him quite unmoved. He seemed indifferent. She felt
intuitively, however, that he, too, had seen her.

At the station the three had a long wait. They had the little
waiting-room to themselves. Madame Guibert never tired of looking at
the son who was about to leave her. Suddenly she said:

“You are more like your father than any of the others.”

“I have not his faith in life,” said Marcel. “I never saw him
discouraged. Whenever he failed in anything, he used to lift his head
and laugh and say, ‘As long as there’s life there’s hope.’”

“Since his death,” said the old lady, “I have lost all my courage.”

“He lives again in you, Mother. He still lives for us.”

“Through you too. And he is waiting for me.”

Marcel kissed her.

“No, Mother, you know we need you,” he said.

They were no longer alone, and a short time after, at the porter’s call
they went out on the platform. There they saw in the darkness the two
headlights of the express flash as it sped on towards them. The moment
of farewell had come. Never had Madame Guibert shown so much emotion.
Again and again she cried, “My son, my dear son,” while she embraced
him. He smiled to reassure her.

Her last words were a prayer:

“May God bless you and keep you!”

All bent and bowed to the earth which was drawing her towards it, she
went back on Paule’s arm to Trélaz’s carriage.

“Don’t be unhappy, Mother dear,” said Paule, comforting her. “It is
only for a year. You used to be so much braver.”

All the time she herself was in torture because of the secret that had
been entrusted to her.

On the way home they were silent. During the evening at Le Maupas
Madame Guibert suddenly burst into tears.

“I am so afraid I shall never see him again,” she murmured, when she
could give voice to her grief.

“But he is running no risks,” Paule assured her, surprised and alarmed
at this strange presentiment of a danger of which she alone was aware.

“I don’t know. I am as sad as I was the year your father died.”

With a great effort she managed to control herself so as not to
frighten her daughter. Then, taking the hand of her last child with
that gracious gentleness which remained to her from her youth, she said
to Paule, thinking of the many separations in the past, some for a long
time and others for ever:

“Dear little girl, you are the last flower of my deserted garden.”




                                PART II




                               CHAPTER I

                           THIRTEEN AT TABLE


“We might perhaps go in to dinner,” M. Dulaurens timidly ventured to
suggest.

Upon the look which his wife threw at him he left the immediate
neighborhood of the fireplace, where some enormous oak-logs were
burning, and modestly seated himself at the side. Turning to her
guests, Madame Dulaurens smiled and showed them a calendar with the
date February 25th inscribed thereon in huge letters. Mademoiselle de
Songeon, old and dried-up, drew nearer and seemed to take a special
interest in the flight of time. In reality her only thought was to get
possession of the corner near the fire. She had just come back from
Rome. In winter she paid attention only to the southern shrines; and to
accomplish this last pilgrimage she had had to seize hastily the cattle
of a farmer whose rent was in arrears. While warming her large feet she
considered the calendar.

“But it says the twenty-fifth of February, 1898!” she exclaimed after
reading it, “and we are now at the twenty-fifth of February, 1901. You
are exactly three years behind the time!”

All the ladies except Alice got up to confirm this. The calendar was
passed from hand to hand. Madame Orlandi, who was holding Pistache to
her heart--an old, fat, bald Pistache, whose heavy eyelids fell over
bleary eyes--cried out astonished and proud of her own penetration.

“Oh, _I_ know! You have kept it at the date of your daughter’s
wedding. To-day is the third anniversary. How clever and delicate your
motherly love is! You are _so_ sympathetic, dear Madame Dulaurens.
I too love to keep souvenirs.”

“I’ll wager you don’t remember the date of my wedding, Mamma,” said
Isabelle, now Madame Landeau.

“Oh, you dreadful Isabelle! You’re always ready with a jest,” said her
mother.

And, with diplomacy which lacked subtlety, the Italian countess bent
over her pug and covered him with caresses.

Seeing all her guests busy, Madame Dulaurens threw a hasty glance at
the clock and saw that it was a quarter to eight. Dinner was ordered
for seven, and in the provinces punctuality is strictly observed.

“My dear little countess, did you see anything of Clément this
afternoon?” she asked her daughter, who sat silent and absent-minded.

“No, Mamma,” answered Alice, in a low voice.

Four or five months after Marcel Guibert’s departure, the despairing
Alice, crushed and submissive, had married, at her clever mother’s
bidding, Count Armand de Marthenay, then Lieutenant of the 4th Dragoons
at Chambéry. For the third time they were celebrating her “happiness.”
Her maidenly languor and supple slenderness had changed to depression
and leanness. Her limpid eyes and the drooping corners of her mouth
told of profound and habitual sorrow. Without losing their refinement
her features had altered. Through a greater prominence of the
cheek-bones, a more pronounced thinness of the nose, a fading of color
in the cheeks, the old expression of youth and innocence had given
place to a sad little air of fragile resignation. She bore the marks of
a sorrow which filled her life and of which her husband was certainly
quite aware. To be convinced of this, it was sufficient to look at the
heavy, pimply visage behind her--the vacant face of a man prematurely
worn out.

The house at Chambéry where the Dulaurenses lived in the winter
reminded one in its massive structure and the pillars of its staircase
of the showy palaces in Genoa the Magnificent. The drawing-room looked
on to the Place Saint-Léger in the centre of the town. Ten lamps
lighted up the vast room that evening, but were not sufficient to show
off the fine old high-timbered ceiling.

Madame Dulaurens anxiously left her daughter, and drawing back the
window-curtain looked out into the square, which she saw by the
gas-jets flickering in the keen frosty air, was quite empty. She drew
down the blind and looked at the party. They seem so interested in
their talk that she decided to wait a few minutes longer.

“Madame Orlandi, who is always late, came too soon to-day,” she thought
rather spitefully.

Round the fireplace the women were listening to Mademoiselle de
Songeon, who was describing the catacombs at Rome with the devotion
of a catechumen. Madame Orlandi, artlessly devoid of morality and
unskilled at suitable comparisons, said she preferred the ruins at
Pompeii, because the pictures there were so diverting. Mesdames de
Lavernay and d’Amberlard, mature and solemn women, had no opinion
at all. Their aristocracy was very pleasing to Madame Dulaurens,
who gladly advertised their origin. They were well-bred, and valued
existence according to the number and the importance of the invitations
that they managed to procure for themselves. Their husbands, a pair of
practised parasites, had retained a distinguished air from the old
royalist days. They had the right prejudices, were sincerely ignorant
of modern life, and sought pleasure unceasingly. Baron d’Amberlard had
high color and liked good living; the Marquis de Lavernay, still young
in spite of his white hair, reserved his polite speeches concerning
feminine beauty.

The latter had just come from the Court of Sessions and was giving a
group of men his impressions of the jury.

“You condemn a thief and let a child-murderer go scot-free,” said M.
Dulaurens. But the nervous little man hastened to add: “Please note
that I am not criticising you.”

M. de Lavernay laughed unreservedly.

“Ah, my dear fellow, if we sentenced child-murderers we should never
have any servants.”

“What a mania there is for having children!” cried M. d’Amberlard.
“One’s family should be governed by the state of one’s finances. What
do you think about it, M. Landeau?”

M. Landeau admitted that he had thought nothing about it. As a
millionaire, he was always fighting terrible battles with labor so
as to be able to pour a golden rain upon his wife and at last with a
triumphant cheque to touch her proud heart. She played with him much
in the same way a tamer does with the beast that roars, threatens,
and arches its back. Under the pretext of filial duty towards Madame
Orlandi (who did not care at all what she did) she had refused to
follow him to Lyons; so twice a week he came to see her in the splendid
villa he had built for her on the Cognin road. It was an overworked
man with bent shoulders and pale face that she dragged with her into
society. There, tamely growling, he admired Isabelle’s beauty and
listened joylessly to her bell-like laughter, as she showed her white
and shining teeth.

M. d’Amberlard, stifling a yawn, began to fidget.

“I’m afraid the dinner will be spoilt. It has been kept waiting too
long,” he whispered to the Marquis de Lavernay, who made no answer but
hastened to an empty seat beside Madame Landeau, where he was seen
shaking his long horse-like head in his efforts to please.

Armand de Marthenay, motionless and silent up to now, overheard this
and woke from the torpor into which he had sunk.

“It is all Clément’s fault. He must have had a smash up.”

He spoke so loudly that everybody heard and turned towards him. The
long wait had become unbearable to all. The hands of the clock pointed
to eight.

Again Madame Dulaurens tried to hide her anxiety. “Clément,” she said,
“is very careful. But these cars are dangerous at night. One can so
easily run into something in the dark.”

“Where did he go?” asked the women.

“That is just what is worrying me. He left for La Chênaie at five
o’clock. It would hardly take him ten minutes, it is only two miles.
And he hasn’t come back.”

Anxious as ever for peace, M. Dulaurens assured them that nothing had
ever happened to Clément.

“Not to Clément,” Marthenay sarcastically put in. “He is a young devil!
He is always running over something,--hens and dogs, and the other day
it was an old woman.”

“We paid her,” said Madame Dulaurens indignantly. “And paid her very
well indeed.”

“She is limping about on your money.”

M. de Lavernay gallantly, and without any suspicion of irony, explained
to his hostess that there were unfortunate creatures who were in the
habit of throwing themselves in front of motor cars, so as to make
money out of the owners. All except Mademoiselle de Songeon, who
hated progress, were in favor of this fashionable sport and were busy
defending it when Clément entered, looking very jolly and with a red
face, his fur coat covered with frost which shone in the light.

Madame Dulaurens rushed up to him and scolded him well instead of
satisfying her desire to kiss him. Since her daughter’s marriage she
had insisted on playing a much larger part in her son’s life. He made
no attempt to excuse himself, but laughed, melting like an icicle all
the time.

“Oh, well, we got stuck at Cognin. Such a bad business!”

M. d’Amberlard tossed his head furiously.

“A nice business indeed,” he said. “Dinner kept waiting! He is talking
very coolly about it, the young scoundrel.” He was still raging
inwardly when Madame Dulaurens took his arm to go in to dinner. Clément
made as though to offer his to Mademoiselle de Songeon, who stared at
him scornfully and ordered him to go and dry himself.

“You are quite right, Mademoiselle de Songeon,” he replied
philosophically. “But you aren’t _very_ kind! I shall go and dry
myself and change too.”

He disappeared, returning in his dinner-jacket as they were serving
the filet of beef with mushrooms. With all the coolness of the rising
generation, he asked loudly for soup and fish and made no attempt to
make up for his delay.

As the courses succeeded one another harmoniously, the guests’ pleasure
grew and the conversation became general. Clément, having satisfied
his appetite, was burning to take part in it and attract the attention
of the table. He watched his opportunity and called across the room: “I
have some great news for you.”

“What is it?” they cried on all sides.

“I heard it at Cognin. I had it from my chauffeur, who heard it from
the schoolmaster.”

“Cognin news,” said Isabelle ironically. “It will interest the whole of
France!”

    “At the news I bring you
    Your lovely eyes will weep,”

Clément hummed to the air of “Malbrough.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed everybody.

“You may laugh, Madame, but my news _will_ interest the whole of
France.”

“Then tell us what it is,” cried several voices at once.

Every eye was on the young man. He enjoyed the momentary superiority
which his possession of news gave him. Holding the whole table at his
mercy he had succeeded in gaining his ends. They were now serving
truffled galantine “_des gourmets_” as it was called, the glory of
a Toulouse specialist. In front of each guest costly orchids of various
hues blossomed in a tall Murano vase. It was Alice’s idea to have this
decoration, which she had read of in a society paper.

“Well?” said Madame Dulaurens, speaking in the name of all.

Clément could contain himself no longer. He had had time enough to
appreciate his own tactlessness, but with the utmost coolness he said:
“Well, Commander Guibert is dead!”

This news, dropped like a bombshell in the middle of a gay
dinner-party, all but perfect in its arrangements, amid the warmth, the
lights, the charming flowers, the dazzling jewels, the lovely dresses,
and the general cheerfulness, seemed almost an impropriety. It would be
only the unmannerly Clément, coarsened by sport, who could be guilty
of such a blunder. Why, the very introduction of the subject of death
seemed to imply that the pleasures of the evening were not everlasting;
and does not the whole art of enjoying the present consist in supposing
it will last forever? And then if it had only been the death of some
unknown person, they could have passed it over! But Commander Guibert
could not be so quickly disposed of; the common knowledge of his
origin, his personality, and his brilliant career prevented his name
from dropping out of the conversation. Stupefaction reigned at the
table.

Isabelle was the first to speak, and it was to cast doubts on the truth
of the story.

“But it is not possible! Last year we might have believed you. He was
taking part in the Moureau Expedition to Africa. He was travelling in
unknown and dangerous countries. But he came back safe and sound, and
famous as well. Now he is commander and an officer of the Legion of
Honour at thirty-two. He is our great man. You are all jealous of him,
so you think you will just get rid of him.”

She spoke with animation, turning from right to left in her chair, as
if inviting all the guests to witness her anger. On Clément’s unhappy
remark she had looked at Alice and saw the blood leave her cheeks as
though she were dying. This mortal pallor extended even to her hands,
which shook nervously, hardly distinguishable from the white cloth.
Isabelle had immediately turned the attention on herself with her hasty
words.

Clément made a slight gesture.

“No, he is dead. I admire him as much as you do, but he is dead.” And
he repeated this word, which should never be spoken in a dining-room.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake do be quiet,” murmured Madame Orlandi, who had
just noticed that they were thirteen at table, counting twice over
in the hope that she was mistaken. Solemnly Mademoiselle de Songeon
exclaimed: “May God rest his soul in peace.”

“Did he die in France?” asked M. Dulaurens. “The Expedition came back a
month or two ago.”

M. d’Amberlard, quite unmoved, was enjoying a truffle that he kept on
his plate so as to reserve its taste to the last, and M. de Lavernay
kept his eyes fixed on Isabelle’s corsage as she bent forward.

M. de Marthenay put down his glass, which he kept emptying constantly.

“I met the Commander,” he said, “scarcely three weeks ago. He was
getting out at the station. I went up to him but he seemed not to know
me.”

“Probably because he didn’t want to,” Isabelle could not refrain from
remarking. She hated Alice’s husband, who made persistent love to her
when he had lost at cards and had nothing else to do. And to prevent
any more allusions she added: “No doubt he has a contempt for officers
who have resigned.”

M. de Marthenay had left the army the year before.

“He _had_ a contempt, you mean,” said Clément cruelly. He would
not allow them to rob him of his dead, and when he had reconquered the
general attention he gave a few details.

“My brother-in-law is quite right,” he said. “Commander Guibert did
come back to Savoy last month. He stayed two days with his mother and
sister at Le Maupas and then returned to his barracks at Timmimun, in
Southern Algiers.”

“At the entrance to Touât,” explained the ex-dragoon, who since he left
the army was exceeding keen about all military questions. “But General
Lervières passed Timmimun to-day, so the Berbers and the Doui-Menia
must have attacked him from the rear.”

Young Dulaurens stuck his monocle in his eye and stared impertinently
at Marthenay.

“Armand,” said he, “I don’t recognise you. Have you gone in for
strategy?”

With another look at her friend’s bloodless face, Isabelle made a fresh
interruption.

“I do not understand. He had scarcely returned from crossing the
Sahara, a trip which lasted eighteen months or two years, I don’t
quite remember which. After these expeditions one generally has a long
leave. Then he evidently took no rest? He went back at once to this
expedition? Because, if he is dead, he must have been killed in battle.”

Raising his eyebrows, Clément let his eyeglass fall.

“When a man is a hero he is not one by halves. He asked for this post
on account of the danger.”

M. de Lavernay, bending towards his neighbor, whispered in her ear:

“I like to see you get excited. Your cheeks color and your eyes flash.”

But it was not at either her cheeks or her eyes that he was looking.
The impatient Isabelle cut him short with that sharpness which marriage
had not cured.

“Do be quiet, you old sinner!” she cried.

Alice had taken up her bouquet of orchids and was smelling it, half
hiding her paleness. At last Isabelle, giving full vent to the
uneasiness which had tortured her for the last few minutes, said,

“And Captain Berlier? He was coming back from the Sahara too. He
belonged to the same regiment as Commander Guibert. Had he gone with
him to Timmimun?”

Did Clément Dulaurens guess her anxiety from the tone of her voice? Too
often had he suffered from her sarcastic remarks not to take a cruel
pleasure in tormenting her a little now.

“Yes, that is true,” he said. “Jean Berlier must have been there as
well.”

“Now what do you know exactly?” demanded Isabelle imperiously.

“Tell us what you heard,” put in Madame Dulaurens. Annoyed at the
course of the conversation, she had given up all hope of diverting it
and was resigned to hearing the whole story.

“Well, here you are! While they were mending my car at Cognin I went
into the Café National. There were only the mayor, the schoolmaster,
and three or four municipal councillors there. When they saw me they
looked at me mysteriously. ‘Hallo,’ I said to them, ‘are you holding a
meeting?’ ‘No, we are just chatting,’ the mayor said. And that was as
far as we got.”

“And then?”

“That was all that concerned me. I went out, and sent my chauffeur to
have a drink in his turn. He is very thick with the schoolmaster. They
are both anarchists.”

“Anarchists!” repeated Mademoiselle de Songeon wrathfully.

“Certainly. Everybody is nowadays. It is the fashion. My chauffeur came
back. ‘I know what it is,’ he said. ‘They have had a wire from the
Minister about Commander Guibert’s death in Africa.’ ‘Are you sure?
I said. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘He was killed by savages defending a town
called Timou--Timmimun?--that’s it. Then of course they had to tell his
people the news. They were very puzzled how to do it. At last they sent
a policeman.’”

“A policeman?” said M. Dulaurens, a stickler for legalities. “But the
mayor should have taken the fatal telegram in person.”

“The Guiberts are conservatives,” said M. de Lavernay. “These
republicans will not trouble themselves in such cases.”

“But the Guiberts are not interested in politics.”

“The grandfather was a councillor, of conservative views, and the
father was mayor of Cognin. That is quite enough.”

Madame Dulaurens was trying to catch a glimpse of her daughter, who
was separated from her by a candelabrum. Alice’s orchids were drooping
under the warm rain of her tears. In the general confusion no one had
seen her cry.

“How did he die?” questioned one of the ladies.

“At the head of his men--after the victory--with a bullet in his
forehead. I quote the telegram that my man read.”

“Did he receive the last sacrament?” asked Mademoiselle de Songeon
shaking her grey head.

The ever-correct M. Dulaurens summed up the affair. “He is a great loss
to his country.”

“Yes,” added his wife, in a noble impulse of eloquence. “We will
honor his glorious memory. We will get up a memorial service whose
magnificence shall astonish all Chambéry. It is the duty of our class
to show France how genuine merit must be recognised and rewarded, at a
time when mediocrity has taken possession of the country, when envious
equality drags it down to the lowest level.” She had read this last
sentence that very morning in a leading article of the _Gaulois_.

Alice, surprised to hear all this, thought in her sorrow, “Why then,
did she refuse to let me give myself to him?” And Isabelle was silent,
thinking of Jean Berlier, whose fate was still unknown.

Madame Orlandi, forgetting Pistache for a minute, noticed how
abstracted her daughter was. She looked at her with loving admiration
and praised herself for the depth of her maternal affection. In an
outburst in which the thought of self did not swallow up all pity she
expressed her concern for Madame Guibert.

“Does his mother know?” she asked. And she stopped confusedly, as
though she felt herself guilty of a scandal. All eyes turned to Clément
Dulaurens. The young man answered in a free and easy way, the bad taste
of which was due rather to his youth than to any lack of feeling.

“She must know all by now. As I was coming home I met her driving back
to Le Maupas in her old cart. She was passing under a gas lamp; I
recognised her quite well, I had to go slowly on account of my damaged
car.”

These words brought a dreadful feeling of actuality into the company.
It seemed as if the cold outside air had suddenly frozen this
comfortable dining-room.

Instinctively M. d’Amberlard, who was completely bored, examined
the windows to see if they were open. A shudder passed through the
assembly, all of whom were haunted by the same vision: the picture
of an old woman, already heavily tried by life’s sorrows, going home
through the snow, contented and unsuspecting, to that home where news
of death awaited her.

This inevitable catastrophe which was about to take place--which was
perhaps taking place at this very moment--came home to them all even
more than the glorious faraway death of Commander Guibert on African
soil.

A sob from Alice broke the oppressive silence. In a frightened voice
Isabelle murmured: “She knows by now.”

The mothers all broke down unreservedly, and Madame Dulaurens promptly
resolved to comfort and console the poor woman in an early visit.

With all these solemn faces round him, Clément, who loved gaiety
at table, at last recognised his thoughtlessness and admitted to
himself, “Now I’ve done it!” His father, a slave to punctilio, without
paying any attention to the rest of the conversation, returned to
the discussion of an accessory point which he had not sufficiently
developed.

“The mayor of Cognin should have gone to them and broken the news
delicately, instead of just rudely sending a policeman,” he stated.

Profiting by the interposition of this enlightening remark, M.
d’Amberlard thought it time to unburden himself of a protest which he
had been keeping back with difficulty for some time.

“All our regrets can make no change,” he said, “and we might as well
talk about something more cheerful. When I was in Paris I always used
to ask if a play ended happily before I took seats for it. A party,
like a comedy, should avoid all gloomy subjects.”

The Marquis de Lavernay quite agreed with this, and so death was
forgotten. Champagne filled the gilded glasses. Flowers spread their
perfume over the table which was laden with baskets of preserved
fruits. The jewels of the women sparkled in the lights. It was a
pleasure to recover the former luxurious and comfortable atmosphere
which the unhappy news had disturbed. Alice and Isabelle were left
alone in their distress.

The guests all drank the health of the young de Marthenay couple,
whose wedding anniversary was being celebrated, and a move was made to
the drawing-room. Alice, unable to bear it any longer, rushed to her
mother’s room. In the darkness she gave way to her grief. She had been
able to smile bravely during the toast they had drunk in her honor,
with its allusion to her “enviable happiness.” Her happiness! She had
looked in vain for it both in the present and in the past, and how
could she expect it in the future? With the clear sight which the great
shocks of destiny give us when we expect the bitterness of life to
crush us, she lived again despairingly through the last years of her
life. In a rapid succession of vivid pictures she saw her sad days pass
before her eyes.

She had not wished to marry Armand de Marthenay: it was so constantly
forced upon her that at last she had yielded. She came down the aisle
of the church in her wedding dress on the arm of the husband she had
not chosen. And since then? Could she look back upon one hour of joy,
that deep, pure joy that her childish soul had imagined? The first days
of her married life had been deadened by a kind of merciful stupor,
like a fog which hides the desolation of a blasted plain. She forgot
to feel she had a heart. Her husband still retained the good humor of
a man with something to do. He rode, he fulfilled his military duties,
he received his friends, he got up parties. She allowed herself to be
occupied by her new household duties and by the many society calls.
Instead of the husband of her dreams, she had a companion proud of her
fortune and her pretty face, a man without much delicacy of feeling and
with no great intelligence, not even clever, but possessed of a good
digestion and an idiotic fatuity which enabled him to admire himself
unceasingly all his life. When her little girl was born she thought she
had at last found the oblivion for which at times she still sought.

From this tolerable time in her existence her thoughts travelled on to
the present, which was always with her. After a series of unforeseen
incidents, the regiment stationed at Chambéry had been designated for a
distant Eastern garrison. M. de Marthenay tried to exchange, but it was
impossible. He had either to go away and leave Savoy, or to spoil his
career. At the prospect of this departure Madame Dulaurens had shown
such violent grief that the young wife was foolish enough to remind her
husband of the solemn promise he had made her when they became engaged.
As a man of honor the dragoon sacrificed himself. In twenty-four hours
he had resigned. He then gave way to his idle instincts, which a
soldier’s life had kept in check. And from that time he went steadily
from bad to worse.

He began by becoming a constant habitué of the cafés. In summer he was
a member of the Club at Aix-le-Bains and of the Villa des Fleurs. He
began to play baccarat and won. While his wife was slowly recovering
after their child’s birth he was engaged in low adventures, and
reports were spread about concerning him by the visitors to these
watering-places. One day Alice learned of his base unfaithfulness. She
had kept her innocence after her marriage and learnt the cruel fact
of unfaithfulness before she well knew what unfaithfulness meant. She
rebelled against it, but instead of finding the repentance which she
expected and could have pardoned, she received only this humiliating
answer:

“You wanted me to resign the service and I resigned. You have only
yourself to blame if I try to make up for the loss of my career in my
own way. A man must have something to do. I sacrificed the object of my
life for your sake. What have you given up in return?”

Overwhelmed at his reproaches she retired into herself from that time
and wrapped herself in a mournful silence. She was not resigned, but
she followed the bent of her passive nature.

Losses at cards soured M. de Marthenay’s character. After the
season, idle and unsettled, he began to drink. His wife saw him try
to captivate her friend Isabelle before her very eyes, and was so
discouraged that she noted his failure with indifference. Thus she was
obliged to follow the only too rapid phases of his fall, of which she
was perhaps indirectly the cause. She could not shut her eyes to it,
yet felt the impossibility of saving him.

Thinking over all the details of her miserable past, Alice felt
astonished that she suffered so much. She had grown accustomed to
living amid such thoughts. Their dull monotony was now familiar to
her. But to-day a new sorrow had come to reinforce their bitterness.
Fresh melancholy pictures rose up in her memory as if to remind her
of the part she had played in her own destiny. She remembered the
day when Paule Guibert in the oakwood had stirred her heart with an
unknown desire. She saw once more the vivid light of the setting sun
through the trees and heaven descending upon her transfigured soul,
saw Marcel’s tall figure bending down to her with his words of love.
And then ... then she saw him lying dead in a distant, sun-scorched
land, a bullet through his head, pale and terrible, his reproachful
eyes fixed upon her. Oh, those eyes of agony! How well she knew their
look! They had gazed on her like that when she had kept that obstinate
silence--that wicked silence which had ruined their happiness. Now in
this dark room she vainly hid her face so as not to see them. “Marcel,
forgive me!” Distracted and trembling, her love made supplication to
him. “Don’t look at me like that! I did not know. I was a child. That
is my excuse. Yes, I was a coward, I was afraid to strive for you, to
fight for my love. I was afraid to wait, to love, to suffer, to live.
But God has punished me--oh, how cruelly! Close your eyes and forgive
me....”

Frightened at the sound of her own voice, she laid her hand on her
bosom. She was choking as on the day her child was born. At last in
her broken heart rose up the knowledge of life in all its strength and
dignity. Her soul had won its freedom, and she loved Marcel as he had
loved her, nobly and proudly. For her sake, to seek forgetfulness, he
had travelled over Africa and met glory and death. Perhaps, as he fell,
he had recalled her face. That she might have been his last thought,
though that thought might be but disdainful, was now her most ardent
prayer. Comparing her existence with the one she had thrust from her
she regretted not being a hero’s widow instead of sharing the dull life
of a man incapable of inspiring or feeling love.

The door opened and Madame Dulaurens, anxious at her daughter’s long
absence, called in the darkness.

“Alice, are you there? Answer me.”

“Yes, what do you want?”

Madame Dulaurens was surprised at the unexpected hardness of tone. She
went back to the lighted corridor and returned with a lamp. She found
her daughter lying motionless and white, and recognised traces of tears
on her hastily dried cheeks. She sat down beside her at once and tried
to take her in her arms. But Alice shrank from her embrace. All the
mother in Madame Dulaurens was aroused, and she winced with pain.

“Dearest,” she said, “you are suffering. Tell me your trouble. I am
your mother. What the matter to-night?”

Although her masterful nature was irritated by this rebellion, she
understood that now she must not put pressure on her child. She covered
her with kisses and overwhelmed her with kind words, but it was all in
vain.

“What is the matter with you to-night?” she repeated.

“Nothing,” said Alice in a firm voice, which her mother did not
recognise.

In the face of such profundity of sorrow Madame Dulaurens hesitated,
not knowing which to ask of the two questions that burned her lips.

“Is it about your husband?” she asked at last.

She had guessed that Commander Guibert’s death had something to do with
these tears. But she did not dare to allude to the secret which she had
once treated so lightly.

“Yes,” whispered Alice, weakening again. And they both accepted this
lie, by which they were spared the reproach which no passing of time
could wipe away. Both were thinking of Marcel Guibert and they talked
about Armand de Marthenay.

Alice began to complain of her joyless life.

“We were wrong to ask him to resign.”

“Oh, my dearest,” said her mother, “how you hurt me! So you would have
agreed to desert me?”

“Was it better that my husband should desert me?”

“I should have died,” exclaimed Madame Dulaurens energetically, “if you
had had to go. You will never know how I love you and how I want to
make you happy!”

She spoke in entirely good faith. Deceived by her daughter’s words,
she had regained the serenity which the memory of death had almost
destroyed. Taught by her own experience, she was not in the least
surprised at the disillusionment of Armand’s neglected wife. Was it not
the lot of most women? And had she not, what so many women lacked, the
consolation of a warm motherly heart to fly to?

But Alice saw another mother, who at this hour was draining her cup
of sorrow, a poor old woman by whose side she longed to be, where she
would have been if she had listened to the dictates of her heart. Like
all weaklings who revolt, she went beyond the bounds and did not stop
short of injustice to her own mother.

They looked at each other. Madame Dulaurens understood at last and felt
a deep anguish. A gulf yawned between her and her daughter. There had
suddenly and relentlessly been revealed to both of them the difference
of their two natures, the one imperious and under the sway of worldly
prejudices, the other shrinking, docile, and under no sway but that of
the heart.

When they went back to the drawing-room a few minutes later, calm, and
leaning on each other’s arms, nobody could have suspected the domestic
drama which had just parted them asunder.

Isabelle was leading the conversation, talking loudly, making jokes,
and showing her white teeth. And from time to time she looked at her
surroundings, at her husband, at her admirers, M. de Marthenay, M. de
Lavernay, and particularly at Clément Dulaurens, with eyes full of
hatred and scorn. She detested them all, because they could not tell
her that Jean Berlier was still alive.

She saw that Alice had been crying and envied her the reality of her
sorrow. When the time for departure came, as her friend went to the
hall to help her on with her furs, she took advantage of their being
alone to throw her arms round her neck, and at last giving way to the
grief which she had choked back all the evening she whispered a few
wild words, which were understood at once.

“My poor Alice! What cowards we have been! Oh, why can we not be
allowed to mourn for our dead this evening? Our lives belonged to them,
and we denied it. Let us weep for them and for our dull existence which
might have been so bright!”

“Yes,” said Alice, “sorrow itself is more to be desired than the fate
that is ours.”




                              CHAPTER II

                        THE POLICEMAN’S MESSAGE


The discussion at the Café National at Cognin had been long and
animated. When the telegram from the Minister of War had been brought
to the town-hall, the municipal schoolmaster was on the doorstep
dismissing his pupils. He took the envelope from the hands of the
messenger, who was puffing out his cheeks to make his importance felt.

“Official and post free! For the Mayor.”

“Give it to me,” said the schoolmaster cautiously. And he immediately
tore open the envelope, to show the messenger who was the real head of
the community. He read the words twice aloud, with the Minister’s name
at the bottom:

“The Mayor, Cognin, near Chambéry. Inform Guibert family immediately
decease of Commander Guibert while defending Timmimun, Algiers. Shot
through forehead after repulsing assault.”

He did not grasp it the first time he read it because, taking
everything to himself as most people do, he expected to discover
something of a personal nature in this government communication,
perhaps the exemption of his son, who had just drawn his lot and was
trying to escape military service. His disappointment prevailed over
his pity.

After having told his wife and his deputy about the news, he put on his
hat and ran over to the Café National, kept by Mayor Simon himself.
The latter was the successor to the post to Dr. Guibert, who had been
excluded from the Corporation a short time before his death, the very
year that he had gratuitously attended almost all the population when
attacked by typhoid fever. He was a country lawyer, an intemperate
boaster, who drank with all his customers and treated his bar as a
political committee-room. Ignorant and incapable, but genial-hearted,
he left all his duties to the schoolmaster, who was filled with false
teachings and who dazzled him by his socialistic and anti-militarist
theories which he culled from pernicious propagandist pamphlets. In
public he treated him condescendingly, but he obeyed him humbly at the
town-hall.

“Well, Master,” he cried as he saw him come in, “you have forgotten
your ferule!”

Proud of knowing this rare word, he used it on every occasion to poke
fun at his assistant.

“There is some news,” said Maillard mysteriously gliding up to the
counter. And the Mayor and his assistant gravely shook their heads
in concert. It was important that they should impress two honest
customers who sat at the end of the room, with their whips slung over
their shoulders, sipping absinthe before going out again into the
bitter cold of the clear winter evening.

After informing himself of the contents of the telegram, the Mayor
shook his red head.

“It must be done. These Guiberts are people of importance. I’ll put on
my frock-coat and go up to Le Maupas.”

He had been in the militia during the campaign of 1870 but his regiment
never reached the front. From that terrible year he had learned the
fear of war and a respect for courage. Flattered at having received
an official telegram, he also felt pride in the heroism of his
fellow-townsman abroad. He called his daughters to tell them the secret
that the schoolmaster’s wife had already told everybody.

While he was strutting about, the ferret-faced Maillard looked at him
and cackled.

“Let’s drink a glass of something,” said the Mayor. “Nothing can be
done well without a drink. I shall have time. One always arrives early
enough when carrying a message of death. But what do you find to laugh
at, you imp of ill omen?”

“I was wondering, Mr. Mayor, if we were republicans or not. The
Minister treats you like a dog, _you_ the head of the community.
‘Inform the Guibert family!’ Hurry up and do it. For whom is all this
fuss? For a lot of reactionaries, who defied you at the town-hall. They
are not so particular when there’s only a man of the people concerned.”

“He was a commander,” observed the hotelkeeper, who could not forget
his respect for rank.

“Isn’t a soldier’s blood worth as much as an officer’s?” retorted the
schoolmaster in a professorial tone. “I suppose that the equality which
is proclaimed on all our public buildings is a lie then? Everything is
for the gold lace? The others are just food for powder! It was well
worth while having the revolution only to re-establish caste a hundred
years later!”

It is imperfect education that is responsible for these bitter,
envious, aspiring beings, who find it hard to tolerate superiority of
any kind. Before his weak boasting Mayor, the little ill-natured man
gave free scope to his hatred of the authorities, a hatred which was
increased by the coming entry of his son into military service.

Simon’s face grew red. It was a sign that his brain was working.

“No,” he said, “I can’t get out of it. It is an order.”

“Only the Minister of the Interior can give you orders. You aren’t
amenable to military law.”

“But, good God! Madame Guibert will have to be told.”

“I don’t deny it. Only it isn’t necessary that you should put yourself
out about it. A Mayor is not at everybody’s beck and call. When a Mayor
bestirs himself it is the State which acts. You send a deputy, or even
a councillor, where enemies of the Republic are concerned. Devil take
it! One is either a republican or one isn’t, Mr. Mayor!”

“Mélanie, fetch us a pint!” cried the Mayor, torn between his natural
duty and his duty as a republican which was being instilled into him.
“And send the boy to look for Randon, Pitet, and Détraz.”

These three were the most influential councillors in the place. Pitet,
with his red, freckled face, which gained him the nickname of Pitet le
Rouge, was the first to arrive.

“I heard the news at the Fountain,” he declared as he came in. “I can’t
do anything. What do you want of me?”

He always spoke in a coarse, aggressive tone. He had been a tenant at
Le Maupas, and suddenly had to leave his farm. Nobody ever understood
why he was sent away from an estate where the tenants and servants
“took root,” as was currently said. In reality it was on account of
a theft, about which Dr. Guibert had never told anyone. Till the
doctor’s death Pitet had kept quiet. When he was quite certain he could
do so with impunity, he raised his head and played a vigorous part in
all the elections. He began by making money out of politics and ended
by getting dignity--which people were the less ready to refuse him
because he needed it so much. The whole community was afraid of him,
and everyone knows the power of fear over the peasants. He turned the
scale at once in favor of the schoolmaster Maillard. The Mayor could
not put himself out for the “aristocrats.”

“The Mayor must put himself at the service of everybody,” said Simon,
whose face shone like a burning log. “And, besides, a man’s death isn’t
a matter of politics.”

Pitet the Red would not hear of it.

“There you are! You must bow and scrape to the nobility and the church!
Then you will say it isn’t a matter of politics. Your daughters go to
Mass, Mr. Mayor. Take care, it won’t be forgotten.”

“But _I_ don’t go to their church! Our deputy knows that,” cried
Simon.

“You don’t go to Cognin, but you go to Bissy.”

Bissy was the neighboring parish. While the Mayor was defending
himself, Randon and Détraz entered the room.

“Now, Mélanie, two pints of wine, one red and one white. And see that
it’s good stuff!”

The newcomers asked together: “He’s dead then?”

“The whole place knows about it!” cried Simon, raising his arms to
heaven. “We must hurry up or Madame Guibert will hear of it.”

Randon, old and broken down, had to thank the size of his estate for
the electors’ regard. He was an honest man, but as shy and nervous as
a hare. He gave a timid vote for the Mayor’s visit in person. As to
Détraz, the boorish and vulgar, he admitted at once that he took no
interest whatever in the question.

“Two against two; it’s a tie,” shouted Pitet the Red, exultantly,
throwing all his long-cherished rancor into the argument.

In a weak voice Randon muttered that the schoolmaster had no say in
the matter and that the Mayor’s voice was the important one. But
nobody listened to his prudent words. The Mayor was derided for the
lukewarmness of his democratic opinions and was at last reduced to
silence.

“Now then, you’re the oldest, you must go,” said Pitet to Randon.

“Oh, no, not I!” cried the latter, terrified. And he kept on repeating
“Not I!” as if the message of death threatened his own life. He was
thinking of his own peace of mind above all things.

“Well then, you, Détraz.”

“It isn’t my business.”

“Then _I_ shall go,” said the Mayor, taking on an offensive manner.

Randon expressed a mild approval.

They both remembered how Dr. Guibert had attended and saved their
children. They strove hard to reconcile their opinions and their
prospects of re-election.

Furious at this reverse which followed his victory, and also excited by
the wine he had drunk, Pitet shouted: “Haven’t you been told that it is
too much honor? Can’t you hear? I tell you, don’t argue!”

“What?” exclaimed the Mayor, purple in the face.

The schoolmaster interrupted in honeyed tones:

“The logical thing is to give the message to the police. They carry
the Mayor’s orders in the town. A policeman can take the telegram and
explain that the Mayor has sent him in person.”

“That, of course, is the only right way,” said Pitet approvingly.

No sooner said than done. Faroux, the policeman, was sent for, and the
schoolmaster gave him the Mayor’s instructions with the telegram. A
few more glasses were drunk and the party broke up.

Old Randon, who was waiting for his cart, was left alone in Simon’s
bar. For a few minutes the two men found nothing more to say. They were
thinking of the effect of the message, which they had forgotten in
their discussion.

“We are cowards,” the Mayor admitted at last, and the councillor
heartily agreed.

As a matter of fact, they were no more cowardly than the average man.
They simply represented the attitude of honest men confronted by
bullies.

After a long silence--for a countryman moves in the world of ideas at
the pace of a plough-ox among the furrows--old Randon suggested: “Do
you think we ought to go up to Le Maupas together?”

“I was thinking about it,” rejoined the Mayor. And they encouraged each
other with all kinds of good reasons.

“Nobody will see us.”

“It is dark.”

“We will go up privately, as fellow citizens.”

“Just in ordinary clothes, unofficially.”

“The doctor saved my little one.”

“And my two daughters. Mélanie, my hat!”

They got up very firmly. They felt proud of their resolution. They
wrapped themselves up in their capes and went out, the old man going
in front like a youngster. They got as far as the end of the village,
when in the road they met the schoolmaster, who was walking along
smoking a cigar. Maillard grinned as he recognised them.

“What, going for a walk?” he asked.

“No,” said the stammering Mayor, “I am seeing Randon home.”

“But he lives on the Chaloux road!”

The councillor explained matters.

“I am going as far as the Favres grocery near here with an order. It is
for my wife.”

“I will go with you. I am just taking the air before supper.”

Neither the Mayor nor Randon dared to confess their plan. They returned
to Cognin very humbly on either side of the schoolmaster, who held
forth at length and announced the coming golden age of brotherhood.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I shall be back in the evening,” Madame Guibert had said to her
daughter, as she got into Trélaz’s carriage. She was going to Chambéry
on family business. With the help of Étienne and François, who had been
lucky in their enterprises at Tonkin, and with Marcel’s aid during the
Sahara Expedition they had been able to keep Le Maupas.

At sunset Paule came out for the first time to lean on the balustrade.
She listened for the sound of the approaching carriage coming up the
slope, but she listened in the quiet evening air in vain. As the frost
was very sharp she ran to get a shawl, wrapped herself in it, and
waited.

The snow-covered land grew rosy in the evening light. A kind of
virginal purity was over it. The vine-branches and the hedges were
covered with a fine lacework of hoarfrost, which shone in the dying
fires of day. The bare woods had no more secrets, and the branches with
their thousand twigs stood out in the clear air like blades of grass.

Paule, who clung to this little place with every fibre of her being,
loved the fairy-like winter effects. The cold made her shiver. As she
crossed the threshold, a raven flew croaking across the horizon. Its
wings made a black spot against the pale sky.

“Bird of misfortune!” murmured the girl carelessly, without reading any
ill omen in it. Was it not the time for ravens? They hover over the
bare fields, near the houses, trying to find a scanty sustenance.

She put two logs in the drawing-room grate, built up the fire
carefully, and placed a kettle on the logs. Then she went to find a
glass, a spoon, the sugar and the bottle of rum, which she arrayed on
a little table near the fireplace. “Mother will be cold when she gets
back,” she thought during these preparations. “It is freezing to-night
and she will be dreadfully cold in that open cart of Trélaz’s. A good
fire and a hot drink will do her good. Poor Mother!”

She sat down beside the lamp and tried to read a book she had begun.
But this occupation could not hold her attention. She looked at the
clock. It was past six.

Uneasily she took up the shawl which she had left on a chair, and went
back to the veranda. Night had fallen. The stars were trembling in the
sky, as if they were cold. Although the moon was still invisible, the
horizon was not dark. It seemed as if a faint light was rising from
below, as if the white earth illumined the sky. Down in the depths
of the valley Paule saw the lamps of Chambéry shining. She looked
searchingly at the wood with its bare oak-trees, through which the
carriage must come, she watched for the light of the moving lamps, and
listened for the slightest sounds that the breeze carried to her. For
a moment the clatter of a mill deceived her. A shrill scream which
broke the silence made her shudder,--it was so like a cry of despair.
When she had recovered from her fright, she recognised the siren of
a neighboring factory. For a long time she remained leaning on the
balustrade, listening and receptive of every impression.

Marie, the old servant who had lived with the family through good and
bad fortune, came to look for her and scolded her.

“Now isn’t it madness to stay outside in this cold? Will you come in,
Miss Paule? You won’t bring Madame home any quicker by taking cold
yourself!”

Paule obeyed, making no reply. But she went no further than the
kitchen, so that she might be ready to run out at once. Hearing the
gate open, she rushed out and found herself face to face with a peasant
from Vimines, who on account of his poverty was ironically nicknamed
Baron.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in her disappointment, as the poor creature walked
unceremoniously into the kitchen.

“Good evening, everybody! I’ve just looked in as I passed, to get warm.”

From time to time he did a day’s work at Le Maupas. He was an idle
good-for-nothing, whom Dr. Guibert had helped. He often came to the
door and asked for work, though really only to get a drink.

“Good evening, Baron. You did not meet my mother on the road?”

“No, Miss, I saw nobody.”

Seated near the stove with his felt hat crushed in his hand, he looked
at the girl and the servant with a cunning eye. Paule left them and
began gazing out once more into the night. The moon was illuminating
the scene with her silvery beams, but her light revealed only the
emptiness of the road.

In the kitchen the rustic was saying to Marie: “So you haven’t heard
anything?”

“About what?” asked the servant, putting her pan on the fire.

“About the news, bless you!”

“What news, you old chatterbox? What are you keeping to yourself?”

Distrustful, he had thought that they were hiding it from him. At last
he understood that at Le Maupas they were still ignorant of what all
Cognin already knew. As he passed in front of the hospitable house, he
had yielded to his curiosity to see the effect of the bad news. But he
would not tell anything, not he! Everybody has his own job to do. He
quickly drained his glass of red wine, refused a second, and got up to
leave.

“Well, Baron, what about your news? Are you going to take it on to
Vimines?”

“That’s just it,” said he, winking his wicked eye.

“So you won’t tell us about it?”

“Oh, you will know it soon enough.”

“It’s all cry and no wool with you, you old humbug!”

On the threshold the rustic turned round and delivered himself of a
platitude with a sarcastic smile: “Live and learn! Well, well, what
will the old woman do?”

His feet falling lightly in the snow he passed behind Paule, who was
still leaning on the veranda rail.

“Good evening, miss. Bear up! You never know who’s alive or who’s dead.”

The girl started again, more at this voice heard unexpectedly behind
her back than at the words, whose meaning she did not understand. She
came back to the kitchen with a vague fear mingled with her uneasiness.

“Make us some nice soup, Marie, and very hot. It is freezing hard.” And
cheered by the cosy hearth she added, “That Baron almost frightened me.”

The servant snorted. “A good-for-nothing like that, with a long tongue!
I don’t want to see him round here any more. Your father was a good
Samaritan when he picked up that fish. And he has the evil eye. We must
take care. If the soup is burned, it will be all his fault. I don’t
know what story he had heard in the town, but he had a long face and
was watching us as a cat watches a rat.”

The girl went back to the drawing-room to stir the fire. Now she was
alone, she no longer felt her accustomed courage. Her heart was
beating loudly in her breast. She tried to comfort herself and did not
succeed.

“Trélaz’s horse goes so slowly. That business at the lawyer’s always
lasts so much longer than one thinks it will....”

She could no longer keep down her anxiety, which increased every
minute. Even prayer could not calm her. As she was on her knees, she
heard the drawing-room door open.

“Is Mamma there?” she cried as she rose from her knees. It was old
Marie who appeared at the door.

“No, Miss Paule. It is a man who wants to speak to the mistress.”

“Who is he?”

“He says he is a policeman and has been sent by the Mayor.”

“A policeman! What does he want with us?”

As her mind recalled all the bad omens of that evening, the girl
trembled while she gave the order for the man to be shown in. But she
controlled herself and received the Mayor’s messenger with the greatest
outward calm.

Faroux, the policeman, was one of those silent, stolid countrymen who
give themselves up entirely to their work without ever thinking about
it. But in the presence of Paule Guibert it was impossible for him not
to understand at last the importance of his mission. As he came along
the road he had not given a thought to it. So many people approach thus
absent-mindedly the most sacred and most serious tasks.

Standing before him the girl said:

“My mother is not at home. But could I not take her place?”

He stood there silent and stupid, and the pause increased Paule’s
secret fear. He stammered at last:

“Mademoiselle Guibert, I have come to ... to ... tell you ...”

In his face, as the lamp shone on it, she read so much confusion and
trouble that she gave way to her darkest presentiments. With a few
quick words she aroused the poor, frightened man from his stupor.

“Speak, oh, do speak! Has there been an accident? My mother ... on the
road....” She could not finish the sentence.

“No,” said the man, “I did not meet the lady.” And he relapsed into
silence.

“Well, why did you come? If you have anything to say, say it. Do be
quick!”

Straight and proud, she spoke in the commanding voice which she knew
how to take upon occasion, like Marcel. The stiffness of her bearing
quite confused the policeman, who drew the telegram from his pocket and
with his big trembling hand held it out to the girl. He tried to take
it back again, but the blue paper was already in Paule’s hand. Before
she had even opened it, she thought of her brother. She glanced over
it, said “Ah,” crushed up the telegram, and turned deadly pale. But
with a supreme effort she remained standing and did not cry. She could
not show her weakness to this man, whom she thought unfeeling, but she
had to lean on the table. This movement and her pallor were her only
admissions of weakness.

A fearful silence enveloped them. At last she was able to say without
trembling: “It is all right. You may go. I thank you.”

As he was stepping out she remembered the laws of rural hospitality and
added:

“Tell Marie to give you something to drink, please.”

But the policeman rushed through the kitchen and fled as if he had
murdered someone.

“Oh, my God!” cried Paule when no one could hear her. She dragged
herself towards the fireplace, held on to it for a minute with her two
hands, tried to stand, but had to drop into an armchair. Her body shook
from head to foot. She held her hand before her dry, staring eyes to
keep away the horrible vision before them. She saw there before her
on the carpet her brother lying dead, his shattered forehead with the
lifeblood flowing from it. That grave face of his, so melancholy and
so proud, which had been the more so ever since Alice’s refusal,--she
saw it now, sightless, motionless and icy-cold, still in death and
beautiful! “Marcel, Marcel,” she called softly, and hid her face in her
hands. The tears refused to come to her relief. Her adored brother,
the pride of her life, was dead. Dead, she repeated ten, twenty times
before she could understand the horror of it. Dead, the hero of
Andriba, the conqueror of Rabah and the desert! At thirty-two, this
life of courage, of gallantry and self-sacrifice, had been cut off.
Oh, how little he had cared for life. For a long time he had despised
it. Had not the meeting with a shy little girl taken away his joy
in it? And Paule distractedly racked her memory for the pictures in
which she had read the signs of coming fate. There was that hesitating
smile which she had surprised on his lips the first night that he
confessed his secret to her. There was that movement of indifference
as he listened to the mournful warnings of the owls after his last
interview with Alice. And there was again that strange, quiet, almost
disinterested discussion of his future, as they sat there on the
tree-trunk at the edge of the Montcharvin wood, on the day of his
departure from France. For years, since that evening at La Chênaie, he
had carried death in his eyes. He had never again mentioned Alice’s
name, never spoken of his love. But he had lived on without any faith
in life.... And in that dear face that her ardent love called up in her
memory, Paule saw a deep serenity, unchangeable, eternal. Then she gave
a great cry and knelt down, weeping.

“Yes,” she thought, “you are at peace at last. Our love was not
sufficient for you. We loved you too much, Marcel. You do not know how
I loved you. I cannot speak: but my heart was full of you. Why was I
not chosen in your place? Of what use am I?”

A new fear, which she would not admit to herself in this terrible
hour, completed the distraction of her mind. Marcel was not alone at
Timmimun....

All at once she started up.

“And Mother! Mother is coming home!” She had forgotten her. And,
thanking God who had allowed her to break to her mother this supreme
sorrow, she mourned no longer for him who was sleeping his last sleep,
dead on the day of victory, in a conquered land; but instead for her
who was quietly coming home along the dark roads, travelling all
unsuspicious towards the precipice. Might not this last blow crush the
frail old life, overwhelmed already with its many trials?

Paule vainly searched her mind for help. She felt the sadness of a
cemetery round her. What deaths and separations there had been-- Her
sister Thérèse dead at twelve; her father struck down in his vigor; her
sister Marguerite in a convent; Étienne and François in the Colonies.
She was left alone--and how very much alone--to help her mother to bear
this too heavy cross. But as she must do it, she would be brave and
uphold the poor tottering woman with all her strength.

She dried her eyes and bathed her face.

“Not now, not all at once,” she repeated, thinking of her mother. “She
must have time to warm herself, to rest. I will tell her to-night that
he is ill. She did not sleep at all last night, she must sleep at least
to-night. To-morrow her heart will be broken. Suffering is easier to
bear in the day-time than in the horrors of night, so like the grave. I
will not tell her to-night.” And she put her mother’s cup of bitterness
away from her. From the far country where he lay she seemed to hear her
big brother calling to her--his soul at peace--“Spare her this evening.
She has suffered so much already.”

She heard a footstep and hastened to hide, the telegram which had
brought with it death.

Marie entered the room.

“Madame is coming. I hear the wheels in the avenue.”




                              CHAPTER III

                                 NIOBE


“Good evening, Mamma.” Paule called her Mamma when she wished to show
her child’s love the most.

Madame Guibert came in, stooping a little, wrapped in an old and
well-worn fur cloak. The lamp-shade prevented her noticing how pale her
daughter was as she kissed her. She came nearer to the fire.

“Oh, how good it is to be at home again! And how one loves these old
houses! Do you remember, Paule, how sad we were when we thought we
should have to leave Le Maupas?” She warmed her wrinkled hands at the
flames. Paule came up behind her and took off her bonnet.

“Keep your cloak on, Mother dear, for a few minutes. You were very
cold, weren’t you?”

Madame Guibert turned to look at her daughter. She smiled at her, and
the smile under her grey hair, on a face whose cheeks were still young,
whose blue eyes were trusting and clear, was as sweet as the last roses
of the year, which still bloom under the snow.

“Dear child, to look at you warms me more than do these logs that you
have put on the fire for me.”

The girl knelt down to take the kettle off the fire.

“You are going to have some boiling hot grog.”

As she got up, her mother had time to notice in the light how pale she
was.

“But you are the one who should be looked after, Paule. You are quite
white. You are ill, and you never told me.”

The old lady got up at once.

“Oh, it isn’t serious, Mother dear. You must not worry. Perhaps I
took a slight chill waiting for you on the balcony. I will go to bed
directly after supper.” And to calm the motherly fears she had the
courage to repeat laughingly: “It is nothing at all, Mother, I assure
you.” She was thinking that the dining-room lamp would show her face
too clearly and suggested: “Suppose we have our supper here before the
fire! This room is more comfortable.”

“But the table is laid already.”

“It can soon be changed. You will see.”

“Very well, dear. You are icy cold. And in Trélaz’s open carriage one
is exposed to the worst of the weather.”

As her daughter went out, after having poured out a few spoonfuls of
rum into the glass, she added:

“Tell Marie to take down one or two bottles of wine to Trélaz. He
deserves them.”

According to the old Savoy custom, the farmer’s family lived in the
basement of the house.

Paule had just finished clearing the table in the dining-room when the
servant came back with a terrified face.

“Miss Paule, poor Miss Paule! What is this I hear?”

The girl looked her full in the face.

“M. Marcel!” continued Marie.

“Oh!” cried Paule in a hoarse voice, “be quiet! We will tell my mother
to-morrow. It is soon enough.”

Old Marie checked her tears.

“It was Baron who told them downstairs. They knew about it in the
village. Madame must not be told. It would give her such a shock! She
must be prepared.” And admiring her young mistress’s strength, she
said: “You are brave, that you are! You are like _him_!”

With an unsteady hand she waited at the table, her red eyes hidden by
her spectacles.

“Marie is following my example,” said Madame Guibert. “She is ageing.”
And she tried in vain to brighten the conversation.

“You have eaten nothing, Paule. You are ill. Do go to bed. I will warm
it for you and make you some tea. It is my turn to look after you.”

“No, thank you. I really don’t want anything. Marie will give me a
hot bottle. And you must go to bed early too. Good night, Mamma, dear
little Mamma!”

She kissed her mother passionately and went into her room. She was
quite exhausted and her courage was gone. She tore off her clothes,
unfastened her long hair with a single movement, blew out her candle,
and winding herself in her blankets gave way madly to the grief which
she had kept back so long. In the darkness her mood changed by turns
from despair to revolt, from revolt to resignation and at last to
submission and deep pity.

She mourned for her brother, for her mother, and for herself. Turned to
the wall and lost in her misery, her face hidden in her handkerchief,
she forgot that time was passing and did not hear her mother come to
bed.

Madame Guibert slept in the next room. She opened the door gently
so as not to awaken her daughter, and yet to be able to hear her in
the night if she were not well. Then, as she did every night before
undressing, she knelt on her prie-Dieu and said her prayers. As she did
every night, she gathered together her dear dead ones and the lying
scattered all over the world to beg for them God’s loving care. More
particularly she prayed over Paule’s uncertain future and Marcel’s
sorrow-stricken heart. A slight deafness and the absorption of her
thoughts cut her off from all around her. When she was in bed, she
seemed to hear a faint sigh. She listened in vain and reassured herself.

“Paule is asleep,” she thought. “She was pale this evening. Dear little
girl. May God keep her and give her happiness! ... Old Marie must have
taken cold as well. She had such red eyes and shaking hands. I told her
to drink some tea to-night with a little rum in it. It is the rum she
likes best!”

Suddenly she sat up. This time she was not mistaken. That stifled sob
came from Paule’s bedroom. And listening attentively she made out at
last the sound of weeping and despair. Her bosom wrung with a horrible
fear, she got out of bed. She was no longer uneasy about her daughter’s
health. She understood now this sadness that had made itself felt at Le
Maupas all the evening. A calamity had come upon the home, a calamity
that they all knew about except herself, something that was terrible,
since they had kept it from her. She guessed at the dim and dread
presence of her old acquaintance, Death. Whom had it claimed from her
now, whom had it struck? ... While she was walking bare-footed, feeling
her way in the darkness, she counted the absent ones--Marguerite,
Étienne, François, Marcel. Marcel--it was Marcel!

She passed through the half-open door, touched Paule’s bed, and bending
towards her she called:

“Paule, tell me, what is the matter?”

She dared ask no more.

The girl, suddenly roused in a paroxysm of sorrow, gave a cry of
distress which told her secret: “Mamma!”

“It is Marcel, is it not?” said Madame Guibert breathlessly. “You have
bad news about Marcel!”

“Mother, Mother,” murmured Paule.

“He is ill, very ill?”

“Yes, Mother dear, he is ill.” And Paule, half raising herself in bed,
put her arms round her mother’s neck. Gently but firmly Madame Guibert
pushed her away.

“He is dead?”

“Oh!” cried the girl. “Wait till to-morrow, Mother. We shall have news.
Be strong, Mother. We don’t know.”

“You have had something, a letter, a telegram. Show them to me. I must
see them.”

“Mother dearest, do not torture yourself so,” entreated Paule in broken
tones which were in themselves an admission.

“He is dead! He is dead!” cried Madame Guibert. Her voice was like a
funeral dirge. Seated on the edge of the bed, icy cold, she felt hope
and life fly from her rent heart. Vainly she turned towards God, her
supreme comfort in times of sorrow. Her tearlessness was more terrible
than her weeping. She moaned aloud:

“Oh, this time it is too much. I cannot bear it! No, I am not resigned.
O God! I have always bowed to Your will. With my soul crushed I blessed
You. Now my strength is waning. I am only a poor weak old woman, and
I have suffered already more than was needed to try me. I can bear no
more--I cannot--Marcel, my Marcel!”

“Mother, Mother!” repeated Paule, as she strained her to her heart.

She felt her mother shiver as she stood there motionless in the
darkness, like a tree uprooted in the night. Then she got up, struck a
match, and with her arms around the unhappy broken woman she led her
into her room. There she wanted to help her into bed. But her mother,
who till then had allowed herself to be cared for unresisting, drew
herself up.

“No, no, I want to stand,” she said.

Paule had to dress her quickly before dressing herself. Then she took
her into the drawing-room, where she succeeded in reviving the fire,
which was almost out. She made a big blaze and put the kettle again on
the logs. Silent and desolate she walked up and down the room.

She had placed her mother near the fire in an armchair, a blanket over
her knees. Stricken to the inmost depths of a mother’s heart, Madame
Guibert sat without a movement, without a gesture, without a tear, in
a state of prostration more alarming than loud despair. She complained
no more--nor did she pray, she looked straight ahead, seeing nothing
and making no sound. Crushed by fate, she seemed completely numbed.
She could no longer feel her wounded heart beating in her breast. She
let herself sink into the abyss of her misery like a drowning man in a
fathomless sea.

Patiently Paule waited till the pent-up tears should at last break this
dreadful silence, as a stream bursts the dam that is barring its way.
But the silence and immobility continued. She came up to her Mother and
vainly tried to make her drink some tea. She knelt in front of her,
took her hands, and cried:

“Mamma, Mamma, speak to me of Marcel. Speak to me, I beg of you!”

She received no reply. She began to be afraid. She felt herself in a
solitude of death.

“Mamma, am I not your daughter, your last child, your little Paule?”
she sobbed in despair.

Madame Guibert seemed to wake from her lethargy. She saw the sorrowful
face turned up towards her in anguish. A long shiver shook her body.
She was conquered, she held out her arms to her daughter, and leaning
against her she wept. It was she who in her weakness begged for help.

For a long time the two women remained thus, mingling their tears
and their grief, knowing the sad sweetness of loving each other in
suffering.

When the mother was able to speak, it was to thank the Almighty.

“Paule, my dear Paule, what did I say a few minutes ago? God is good.
He might afflict me still more. He gave you to me in my distress to
help me. And I refused to bow myself before Him. O God, Thy Will is
cruel, and yet may Thy Name be praised!”

Finding her courage again she asked to see the fatal telegram. She read
it through several times and discussed it with Paule.

“He is indeed dead.... But he is living again ... he is with God.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “He died a conqueror--He was shot in the
forehead.”

They were silent. They both saw Marcel’s beautiful forehead covered
with blood, that high forehead which was the temple of such proud
thoughts.

As she lowered her eyes towards Paule Madame Guibert was filled with
pity for her.

“Go and rest, dear. To-morrow you will need all your strength--to help
me.”

“Oh, no,” said Paule, “I shall not leave you.”

“Then will you pray? Let us pray for him.” And the two women sank on
their knees.

For a long time they called down divine blessings on their beloved
dead. Paule was quite worn out and had to sit down while her mother,
sustained by superhuman will, continued to pray. The tears ran down her
cheeks; she no longer tried to keep them back.

“My God,” she begged, “accept the offering of our sorrow and misery.
When You died on the Cross Your Mother was with You. I was not near my
son. Give me strength to bear this trial. Not for me, my God, but for
the duty which remains for me to fulfil, for my sons, for her, too,
whom You have not spared. She is very young to have so much suffering.
I am inured to sorrow; but protect her, be merciful....”

As she turned towards Paule she saw her pale face, which had fallen
back in the low chair. The girl, for all her courage, had fallen
asleep in the midst of her tears. Her swollen eyelids were still wet.
Madame Guibert rose and went to sit beside her. Raising the dear
head tenderly, she placed it on her knees. The beautiful black hair
streamed round her peaceful face and accentuated its whiteness. Thus
the tired girl rested, watched over by her mother.

The latter gazed fixedly at these motionless features, but saw them
not. She saw her son down there outstretched upon the sand, his
forehead pierced. He seemed even taller than he had been in the pride
of life. Softly she called to him in a low voice:

“My son, my darling son! Now you are at rest. You have been a good son
and a brave man. There was nothing in your heart that was not noble.
You can see us, can you not? You see us trembling and broken. Protect
us from on high, protect Paule. I am already on my way to the grave,
to join you and your father. The earth is waiting for me--I feel it,
and you are calling me. I shall soon be with you for ever.” And as she
thought of her own death she uttered this cry in her heart: “Oh, my
God, who will be left to close my eyes if thus Thou takest them all
away from me?”

She touched Paule’s body as it pressed against her. She enfolded her in
her arms, and holding her jealously, lifting up her wet eyes, but not
stirring, she continued to pray like a marble Niobe entreating Fate to
spare her last child.

The first lights of dawn appeared. Then morning came, one of those
winter days whose cold light makes the snow shiver. The old woman was
still praying. From God she drew unconquerable strength. Singled out by
sorrow, she must drain the cup of bitterness to its very dregs.

When Paule awoke she saw her mother, pale and frozen, smiling faintly
at her. She could not get her to rest nor even to take any food. More
stooped than ever and ten years older, Madame Guibert sat down at her
desk and began to write in a firm hand to her absent daughter and sons
that they might take their own share in the recent sorrow.




                              CHAPTER IV

                        THE PAGEANTRY OF DEATH


The chief occupation of the Mayor of Cognin in the morning was to read
his paper. With the exception of the workmen from the neighboring
factories, who came in the early morning to the inn and stood at the
bar to drink their small glass of white wine by the wavering light of a
candle, he saw few customers till mid-day. Seated astride a chair, his
back to the fire, he provided himself for the day with the political
news in the _Lyons Republican_ and _Le Progrès_. Thus after
luncheon he was able to retail to the electors both wine and news.

When on the morning of February 26th he unfolded the papers, he was
horrified to see this great headline across the page:

“Victory at Timmimun. Death of Commander Guibert.” It had never
occurred to him that the death of a fellow-townsman of his could
cause such a stir. With a red face, and vaguely uneasy about his own
responsibility, he began to read slowly the grim official story that
the journalist had adorned with several pompous phrases.

“The War Office has forwarded to us a telegram announcing a victory in
the Touât region, at Timmimun. We would herald it with joy as a fresh
triumph of our army, had it not cost us a precious life, that of the
conqueror himself, Commander Guibert. Our political preoccupations must
not be permitted to distract our attention from the spectacle of these
far-off struggles, where French blood is being shed so heroically. It
was in the spring of last year that, after the taking of In Salah and
the occupation of the Gourara district by the column under Colonel
Ménestrel, a little garrison was stationed in this southern village.
Not far away from this place, the sanguinary battles of Sahela and El
Metarfa were fought, where the second battalion of the Saharan Rifles
repulsed the marauding Berabers and Doui-Menias and where Captain
Jacques and Lieutenant Depardieu met their glorious death. When last
winter General Lervières, chief-in-command in Algiers, was ordered to
occupy the Gourara country by force and to proceed to establish himself
in the Touât, he left at Timmimun camp a garrison of one hundred fifty
men, amply provisioned, under Commander Guibert, assisted by Captain
Berlier.

“Commander Guibert, who had just returned to France with the
Moureau-Jamy expedition insisted on rejoining his battalion in the
extreme south. In spite of the two years which were consumed in
crossing Africa, he refused leave and hastened to his post. On the
night of the 17-18th of February last, a party of Berabers, estimated
to be about one thousand strong, succeeded in approaching Timmimun.
The terror inspired by this tribe is such and their mobility so great
that they can cross an immense stretch of country without the native
regiments having the slightest knowledge of their movements. At
daybreak or even before dawn, they opened their attack on the camp.

“A sentry, firing half a dozen shots as he fell back, gave the alarm.
The Berabers jumping over the tumbledown walls penetrated to the inner
court. In the meantime the garrison assembled in haste under the orders
of their chief and soon the Berabers were put to flight, leaving
three hundred dead on the ground. But our losses were cruel. Ten
were dead, including the officer in command, a commissariat officer,
and a sergeant, and more than thirty wounded. Commander Guibert was
killed at the end of the skirmish by a bullet passing through his
forehead just as the Berabers were fleeing in disorder. Commander
Guibert was the youngest chief of battalion in our entire French Army.
Captain at twenty-eight and decorated with the Legion of Honour for
his brilliant services in the Madagascan campaign, especially at the
battle of Andriba, he had taken part in the Moureau expedition, which
had just crossed the Sahara. The victor of Rabah, he had been made
commander and officer of the Legion of Honour on his return. He was
only thirty-two. Born in the town of Cognin near Chambéry (Savoy), he
belonged to one of the most respected families of our neighborhood.
Called to the highest military destinies, he leaves a glorious memory
behind. Savoy is proud of him and cannot fail to honor his memory
worthily.”

“Great Heavens!” cried the Mayor as he finished reading this. He
verified the name of the paper, fearing he might have lighted on some
wretched opposition rag.

The Conservative Nouvelliste and the Radical-Socialist Progrès, which
he just skimmed, gave exactly the same account; the first adding
several criticisms on the carelessness of the intelligence department
in Algiers, the second accompanying it with some humanitarian remarks
on the uselessness of colonial expeditions. But all, whatever their
political opinions might be, united in honoring the worth of Commander
Guibert, praised his splendid career, and deplored his loss.

“That confounded schoolmaster!” cried the Mayor of Cognin.

He took up his hat and was going out. On the doorstep he stopped short.
An officer on horseback in full uniform, wearing gold epaulettes,
stopped in front of the Café National.

“Can you direct me to Madame Guibert’s house, please?”

A few countryfolk, drawn by curiosity, grouped themselves round the
rider.

“Keep along the high road as far as the Vimines road. Then follow the
path through the oakwood. After the wood turn to the left and that is
Le Maupas.”

“Thank you,” said the officer, and he was already giving rein to his
horse when the Mayor called out:

“You are going to visit the lady like that?”

The aide-de-camp glared scornfully at this red-faced individual, and
spurring his horse replied between his teeth, “Naturally.”

“Good,” answered the innkeeper, to please the women who were listening
to him. And he grew scarlet.

He had no appetite for his meal, and before putting into effect the
plan that was maturing in his mind, he sent his daughters to look for
assistance. As he was drinking a glass of brandy to encourage himself,
he saw through the window a landau and pair driving up to the town
hall. A few moments later he was called by a message from the prefect.
Quickly putting on the frock-coat which served for all ceremonious
occasions he rushed across to the municipal building. One of the doors
of the carriage opened. He saw a black uniform with silver lace and he
heard these haughty words uttered by a beardless youth (for the date of
the elections was still some time away):

“Are you the Mayor of Cognin?”

Hat in hand, Simon answered “Yes, sir.”

“I represent the prefect. I am on my way to Madame Guibert, to whom I
carry the condolences of the government on the occasion of the heroic
death of the Commander. You have carefully broken the news to her, I
think, as the official telegram ordered you. You managed the whole
affair tactfully, I suppose?”

“Yes, Monsieur Deputy-Prefect,” stammered the Mayor, ashamed and
trembling.

“I am a councillor of the Prefecture. I wish you to do your duty by
being present at the memorial service with all your councillors. The
government of the Republic knows how to honor its loyal servants.”

Simon stammered his assent.

“That is all, Monsieur Mayor. I shall not require you any more.” And
the young messenger from the prefecture, proud of his own important
rôle and the dignity with which he filled it, departed behind his two
horses, with the haughty, weary air of an old general who has just
reviewed his brigade.

Randon and Détraz, at the summons of the Mayor, sped over to the inn
together. The whole village already knew what was happening at Le
Maupas.

“We are in for it!” cried Détraz furiously on his arrival. The day
before, during all the discussion, he had not opened his lips.

“I told you so,” remarked old Randon, who insisted on reminding them of
his sagacity.

“And so did I,” said the Mayor, not to be outdone. “It is the fault of
the schoolmaster and of Pitet.”

Détraz, who had no idea of politeness, said rude things about the Mayor.

“So you,” he said, “are not the master here then. What do you do at the
town hall? Why, you are as limp as a rag. The schoolmaster leads you by
the nose, like the smallest boy in his class.”

“I!” roared Simon. “I let myself be led by the nose! Just come and see
if the schoolmaster is master or not!”

Followed by his two councillors, the Mayor still gesticulating, burst
into the municipal school. Before Maillard, the sly and wheedling,
however, he felt all his zeal grow cold. But Détraz had already pushed
himself to the front.

“Aha!” he cried, “you have made a nice mess of it, you dirty, shameless
wretch! Here are the prefect and the general sending deputations. And
the corporation in the dead man’s town sends a policeman, just as if
it was serving a writ. With your devil of a brain you’ll have a fine
score to pay!” And he spat on the ground as a sign of contempt.

“I am not answerable to you for anything,” murmured the schoolmaster
with a dignified air.

“Yes, you are. And what about you, Mayor? Have you nothing to say?”

In his rage he had no respect for anyone. Simon was obliged to
intervene.

“You gave us bad advice, Mr. Professor,” he said.

“That’s certain,” added Randon.

“You need not have asked my advice.”

“Who asked your advice?” retorted Détraz, in a fresh access of fury.
“You mixed yourself up in our affairs only to bring them to ruin,
you poisonous ruffian. That’s what you are, a poisonous ruffian!” So
pleased was he with the expression that he repeated it.

Randon took him by the arm and tried to calm him and lead him away.
But it is the way of the ignorant--as it is of women--to introduce
irrelevant arguments into a quarrel. Détraz wheeled round again on the
schoolmaster to shout:

“Besides, you steal the public money!”

“I steal?” protested Maillard.

“Yes, you exact private fees for the right of cutting firewood, for
receiving affidavits, for everything, in fact. We’ll see the last of
you, or I’ll have your skin.” In his rage, he showed the instinctive
hatred of the primitive nature for knowledge and of the taxpayer for
the official.

The two enemies fell upon each other. The Mayor held Maillard back and
Randon restrained his colleague.

“Listen to me,” begged the old man, “listen to me.”

There was a pause while he made a suggestion, which met with the
approval of both the Mayor and Détraz and brought the discussion to an
end.

“To make up for what you have done, Maillard, you must take your pupils
to the memorial service.”

And the Mayor, anxious to take the credit of the victory to himself,
added:

“And you must hoist the flag on the town hall at once, at half mast.”

He departed with an important air, still escorted by his two
councillors.

“Now,” said Randon, “let us go up to Le Maupas.”

Simon applauded heartily.

“Yes, yes,” he cried. “The General sent an officer and the prefect a
young gentleman with silver lace on his trousers. The Mayor will be
represented in person with two members of the council, as it should
be. That will impress them.”

As they passed through the village they noticed Pitet, the Red, in
a field. He was looking very humble, and avoided their eyes. Détraz
called out to him, without managing to attract his attention.

“He is a coward,” said the Mayor, full of courage himself.

“We know what we know,” said Randon mysteriously.

“Yes, we know,” Détraz put in, with greater frankness. “If it hadn’t
been for the Doctor, he would have been in prison, and now he foams
with rage against him. We must certainly get rid of him at the town
hall.”

The snow reflected the cold sunshine. The white mountain glittered in
the raw daylight. Under the pale sky the outlines of all things were
mingled in one uniform and immaculate whiteness.

The prefectoral landau was returning to Chambéry when it met the
improvised delegation from Cognin. With an important air the Mayor made
a sign to the coachman to stop. Hat in hand, he approached the door,
which was opened immediately.

“Mr. Councillor, we have a favor to ask of you.”

“What is it?” replied the young man brusquely. Not having been received
at Le Maupas he came back in a bad temper. The general’s aide-de-camp
had been introduced to Madame Guibert.

“All the fathers of families here complain of the schoolmaster--without
exception--”

“Why?”

“He teaches badly, he thrashes the pupils, he hatches plots against the
country.”

The young man assumed a thoughtful air and with the gesture of a
minister dismissing an audience he replied briefly, “I will see to it.”

Continuing his walk the Mayor rubbed his hands together and said to his
supporters: “I’ve cooked Maillard’s goose for him.”

In the course of the next few days the leading newspapers gave the
story of Timmimun in full detail and, without regard to their political
views, paid homage to Commander Guibert, whose short career had touched
all hearts. The press of Savoy went further still, and, not content
with eulogies, vied with one another in the prominence which they gave
to his portrait and his biography. In their solitude at Le Maupas the
two crushed women received the innumerable testimonies of sympathy
which came to them from all parts of France, from the State, from
Marcel’s brother officers, known and unknown. They leaned on each
other so as to be able to bear their sorrow, and found no consolation
but in prayer and in their mutual affection. Only the visits of Madame
Saudet, the mother of Madame Étienne Guibert were of any comfort. She
understood what to say to those who have suffered separations.

In a swift revolution of sympathy, the world of society, which had not
heeded the Guiberts in their honorable ruin, decided to fall in with
public opinion. Madame Dulaurens could not stay quiet on this occasion.
She induced Mademoiselle de Songeon, Honorary President of the White
Cross of Savoy, to take the initiative in organising a funeral service,
which was to be celebrated with great ceremony in Chambéry Cathedral.
The idea was to monopolize the dead hero and to call attention to
his origin in the most befitting manner. The authorities were to be
invited to the ceremony. Their presence would enhance the prestige
of it, whereas their absence could only embitter the campaign of the
Opposition Press. So there was no doubt what would happen.

When everything was prepared, the collections made, the invitations
sent out, Mademoiselle de Songeon and Madame Dulaurens were officially
delegated to go to Le Maupas to ask the family’s permission. Madame
de Marthenay accompanied her mother. She wished to present her
condolences to Madame Guibert and to Paule, and had not dared to make
the journey alone.

It was the beginning of March. The snow was melting in the desolate,
muddy fields and in the sunken roads. Under the lowering sky,
surrounded by black, bare trees swaying sadly to and fro, the old
country house wore a melancholy and abandoned air.

“I should hate to be buried alive here all the year round,” said Madame
Dulaurens to Mademoiselle de Songeon as the carriage drove up the
deserted avenue.

“The Church is too far away,” answered the pious old maid.

She did not think that God is everywhere. In spite of her age, she
persisted in travelling to meet Him in specially comfortable places.

Old Marie, seeing the carriage, did not refuse to allow the ladies to
enter, despite her strict orders. She ran to announce the visitors as
fast as her legs could carry her.

“I ordered you not to receive anyone,” said Madame Guibert sadly.
And turning to Paule she said: “I have no longer the courage to face
people. Why does Madame Dulaurens come to disturb our sorrow? We have
nothing in common. What does she want?”

“Mother dear, I don’t know,” said Paule, and she rose to depart.

“You will help me to receive her?”

“No, Mother, I don’t want to meet her.”

Madame Guibert looked at her daughter, whose pale and quivering but
decided face clearly showed her thoughts.

“Paule,” she entreated, “do not desert me. I am so shy and awkward, you
know. The evil that people do is more quickly forgotten than the good.
If she reminded me of the past I should not know what to answer. Stay
with me, Paule.”

The girl hesitated no more and made a sign to the servant to show the
ladies in.

“I will stay,” she said.

Mademoiselle de Songeon, little versed in diplomacy, allowed Madame
Dulaurens to speak first.

“You have been cruelly afflicted,” began that lady, going towards
Madame Guibert, who was obliged to lean against the fireplace in order
to rise from her chair.

Then she shook hands with Paule, whose unfriendly eyes she felt firmly
upon her. She would have preferred her not to be there.

“Yes,” said Marcel’s mother. “God is testing us.”

Thus at once she gave the interview a religious and serious tone.
Mademoiselle de Songeon tossed her head and looked upward, as if she
alone had the necessary authority to call upon the divine intervention.

“What a consolation you have in your sorrow,” went on Madame Dulaurens.
“These unanimous testimonies to the Commander’s heroism, this consensus
of sympathy and regret.... In these democratic days merit is no longer
sufficiently honored. It is sometimes death alone which gives to it
its true reward, and in face of this irreparable loss one reproaches
oneself bitterly for having known it too late.”

The mention of her son touched Madame Guibert’s heart at once. “She
is excusing herself now for having sent Marcel away,” she thought.
“She knows now what a mistake she made and regrets it. But Madame de
Marthenay ought not to have come. Her presence is painful to us.”

She looked at the speaker, and her candid glance lighted up her wasted
face as a ray of sunlight illumines the leafless woods in winter. Paule
was on her guard. She was quite aware, however, that Madame Dulaurens
was entirely unconscious of offence.

The latter, after a short pause, explained the reason of her visit.

“It must seem quite natural to you, therefore, that we should want
to pay homage to this beloved memory. The whole of Savoy shares your
grief, but specially the élite of the country, to which the Commander
belonged, both because of his family and his splendid personal worth.”

She took breath, and finding that she was speaking well, she glanced
rapidly at her audience. Mademoiselle de Songeon showed her entire
agreement by nodding her long head. Alice, absorbed in her thoughts
and attentively listening, was looking at the grief-stricken faces of
Madame Guibert and the friend of her girlhood. Her sorrow oppressed her
so much that she laid her hands on her breast. Suppressed sobs were
almost choking her. She would like to have opened her heart to these
poor women but she did not dare. She tried to take Paule’s fingers
gently in her own; she was sitting quite near her. But the girl drew
her hand away firmly. She had forgotten nothing.

Again Madame Dulaurens’s high pitched voice made itself heard in the
silence of the drawing-room.

“The patronesses of the White Cross of Savoy, in fact all the ladies
of that society, have unanimously agreed to ask for the celebration of
a funeral service at Chambéry. The Archbishop will officiate. He has
promised us; we have the word of the vicar-general. More than fifty
priests will be present. The prefect and the military authorities will
be invited, and we have no doubt that they will be represented. It will
be worthy, you may be sure, of the illustrious dead, in its ceremony
and grandeur.”

Madame Guibert had listened without interrupting, and she answered
simply:

“I thank you very much and I beg you to thank these ladies from me for
their good intentions. We celebrated a service at Cognin according
to our means. Our friends came in spite of the cold and the long
distances. The general commanding here came in person. A great many
officers would like to have accompanied him. We do not wish to have any
other outward demonstrations. But I thank you.”

“Yes, Madame. I understand your feelings. Families do not willingly
bear the intrusion of strangers in their mourning. But this is a
special case. The death of Commander Guibert is a public misfortune.
France is wounded by the death of your son. His life and his death do
honor to Savoy. You cannot wonder that Savoy should publicly show him
her great gratitude. The family resources are necessarily limited.
Let us act. Do not deprive us of this pleasure.” ... And checking the
inappropriate word as she uttered it, she corrected herself: “This
melancholy pleasure, I would say, which is given us by intercession
for the dead. Services and priests are prayers in themselves. Can so
excellent Christians as you refuse those that we offer up for you?
Have you the heart to prevent our sharing your sorrow with you?”

“The Church approves of ceremony and worship,” said Mademoiselle de
Songeon, whose religion was luxurious and aristocratic.

Alice had noticed an enlarged photograph of Marcel, and at this moment
saw only the man whom she had loved so unworthily.

Madame Guibert still hesitated, not about her answer, but about the
words of the answer, which she wished to make as polite and delicate as
she could. Madame Dulaurens had come to offer to supplement the simple
funeral services at Cognin, devoid of all ostentation and parade, with
a ceremony far less humble, one brilliant indeed and worldly. Wealth
was visiting poverty and desiring to extend its patronage to it. Paule
understood well, and indignantly glanced at her mother with those dark
eyes of flashing light. But Madame Guibert had seen in this offer only
respect for the memory of her son, and although she was resolved to
negative any idea of a proceeding which she considered useless, she
tried to avoid words which might cause the slightest offence.

Fearing her mother’s shyness and misled by her hesitation, the girl
forestalled her boldly:

“We are much touched, Madame Dulaurens, by your offer. We value it as
it should be valued and we regret having to decline this honor. My
brother’s memory has received suitable recognition. We do not wish any
more public testimony than what we have already received. God does not
measure His blessings by the magnitude of the ceremonies.”

As if she attached no importance whatever to Paule’s declaration,
Madame Dulaurens made as though to turn towards Madame Guibert. The
latter quite comprehended and felt herself bound to say:

“Yes, Paule is right, Madame Dulaurens.”

Mademoiselle de Songeon indignantly lifted her eyes heavenwards, while
the mistress of La Chênaie, little used to rebuffs, returned to the
attack.

“I cannot understand your refusal. In our sympathy for your mourning,
we only wished to explain ourselves in the most natural way. These
ladies, Mademoiselle de Songeon, the Marquise de Lavernay, the
Baroness d’Amberlard, shared my opinion. I represent them now--and the
Archbishop promised to help us.”

She hoped to make a great impression on the poor lady by these
aristocratic references. She did not, could not know, to what degree of
indifference life had brought Madame Guibert with regard to the people
and things of the world.

Paule saw how worried her mother was. She immediately took the
offensive, in order to finish the interview.

“The service at Cognin was announced at Chambéry. All our friends were
there. Some came from far away. Some came whom we did not even know and
who shared our grief. But I was told, Madame Dulaurens, that your pew
was empty, and I could not believe it.” After this attack she added:
“If my elder brother, who is the head of the family, thinks other
honors are indispensable he will let us know. We will conform to his
wishes. My mother and he are the only ones who have anything to say in
the matter.”

Seeing how useless her insistence was, Madame Dulaurens rose to go.

“I regret,” she said, “that there should have been this
misunderstanding, which we have not been able to smooth over. I did not
expect this welcome. But I see that your daughter has entire influence
over you.”

“We are in complete agreement,” said the old woman, getting up with
difficulty in her turn. She approved of her daughter’s decision,
but she wished that the same things might have been said a little
less imperiously. She was afraid that the visitors at Le Maupas were
offended and she was unhappy about it. A slight color flushed her pale
cheeks. As she was going to the door with Mademoiselle de Songeon
and Madame Dulaurens, her color did not escape the eye of the latter.
Madame Dulaurens was looking far revenge; she thought she had found it
and with a cruel irony she uttered these words:

“Good-bye, Madame Guibert. How well you are looking! It is wonderful!
We are surprised and happy to see it.”

Tears mounted to Madame Guibert’s eyes. She was still too sensitive
to injustice. Aged, bent, broken down, she would have wrung pity from
anyone but a baffled woman of the world. Gently she murmured, while the
blood left her cheeks:

“May God preserve my health! My task is not finished.” She was thinking
of Paule, whose uncertain fate caused her anxiety and attached her
still to life. Instinctively she turned round to look at her. But the
drawing-room door was shut. She felt compelled to conduct the ladies to
their carriage. They got in and asked for Madame de Marthenay, who had
stayed behind.

“I will tell her,” said Madame Guibert, climbing the stairs with
difficulty.

Alice, left alone with Paule, had at last allowed her tears to flow.

“Paule, my dear Paule, won’t you let me kiss you? I have cried so much.
If you only knew! I have felt such sorrow since ... since he is gone--
Ah, you cannot know!”

Paule, standing speechless and bewildered, gazed wonderingly at this
elegant young woman with the innocent, beautiful features, who was
imploring her now. She thought of the past.

“What is the good of it?” she said. And, although she had noticed
Alice’s hollow eyes and white face, she added between her teeth: “Are
you not a little to blame for our unhappiness?”

To her the refusal of this weak, clinging, childish creature was
responsible for that familiar anticipation of death which she had so
often, after the interview at La Chênaie, caught in Marcel’s speech and
in his casual talk. She who now stood before her weeping, had formerly
not a single word to send to her brother to give him joy in life and
the inspiration of confidence even in the midst of danger. Had she been
indifferent, she would not have been guilty; it was her cowardice which
had triumphed over her love.

But Alice sobbed: “Oh, I am unhappier than you.” Her despair was so
evidently real that Paule was touched and took her old friend into her
arms. As of old in joy, so now the two women mingled their tears in
sorrow.

“I loved him,” Alice said in a low voice.

“Why did you not want him?”

“Ah, that is the sorrow of my life.” And breaking down completely, she
added in choking accents: “You can cry freely. But I must look happy,
and I have death in my soul.... Paule dearest, may God keep you from
ever suffering as I do. And it is my fault, Paule. Oh, I would rather
be _his_ widow to-day.”

And Paule now understood the secret that was suffocating her friend.
Judging by appearances, she had thought her happy. The gossip of the
town never reached Le Maupas. Now she saw suddenly how immediate and
how lasting was the punishment of the _fear of living_.

Alice was leaning on Paule’s shoulder as if begging for her help. In
spite of the marten cape which covered her, she was shaking from head
to foot. The girl kissed her and lifting her sweet, tear-stained face
said:

“Poor Alice, how I pity you! Be brave. One has to be. You must forget
about it. Think of your child. Make a stronger woman of her.”

“I loved him,” she answered faintly.

Madame Guibert came back and, seeing the two embracing each other, she
understood the reason of their emotion.

“Your mother is waiting for you, Madame.” She tried to find something
else to say, and murmured: “I thank you for your visit.”

Feeling that she was pardoned, Alice took her hand and touched it with
her lips. She dried her eyes, looked once more at Marcel’s photograph
... and fled.

The carriage swept down the bare avenue and passed through the old
gate. Madame Dulaurens, uneasy over her daughter’s stay, was gazing
at her anxiously, affectionately, jealously. She avoided remarking on
Madame Guibert’s refusal and Paule’s attitude, and when they came out
of the oakwood she laid her hand on Alice’s arm as she sat facing her.

“You see how sensible your mother is,” she said to her in a low voice.
Mademoiselle de Songeon was looking out on the melancholy landscape on
the other side.

The young wife looked enquiringly at her.

“Why, of course,” said the mother. “If I had let you marry Commander
Guibert you would have been a widow now.”

Alice said nothing. In terror she searched the secret places of her
soul and asked herself if as a widow she could not have been less
miserable. The sorrow which comes to us from fate is deeper but less
depressing than that whose source is ourselves, our weakness, our
fear of living. Having broken our hearts, the former sorrow purifies
and strengthens them. The other wears us out uselessly and crushes us
slowly with its petty wounds.

Had she chosen the better part? ... To mourn the death of the heroic
husband she would have chosen seemed to her above all a sweeter lot
than to weep for the degradation of the companion with whom she must
share her whole life.




                               CHAPTER V

                                 JEAN


What would not those who have been stricken by the grief of some
faraway disaster give to hear about their loved one from some witness
of the fatal scene, to learn the details of the tragedy, known to them
only through the bare outlines of the official despatch--even though
these details should open their wounds afresh and make their tears
flow once more? They think themselves happy in their very misery, if
they can but know the exact truth, if death’s mysterious horror can be
banished, which tortures their hearts by day and haunts their pillows
by night.

Several months have elapsed since the battle of Timmimun. Of the
two mourners at Le Maupas, one has grown a little more bent and her
smile, already, so rare and faint has vanished for ever. The other has
remained upright and proud, but heedless of her youth has resigned
herself bitterly and hopelessly to the flight of time. Wrapped in
silence and solitude, they never go into the town and cross only the
humblest thresholds, where their presence is always welcome.

And when the postman’s step crushes the gravel in the courtyard, they
still tremble. That worthy man, so full of his own importance, will not
keep them in suspense and according to the postmarks he cries “A letter
from Paris,” “From Tonkin,” “From Algiers.”

“Thank you, Ravet. Go to Marie. She is waiting to give you a glass of
wine.”

Their correspondence is now the only joy of the household. It is more
frequent than it used to be. From afar Madame Guibert’s children try to
shower their love upon her. Letters come from Jean Berlier in Africa.
They are full of Marcel and his glorious death. In the last one Jean
has told them of his return to Savoy at the end of May.

At Le Maupas anxious eyes look down the deserted avenue, where now the
chestnuts are proudly bearing their white candles. The young man coming
slowly up the wooded hill that leads to the old house is no longer
Isabelle Orlandi’s gay cavalier, though he has still kept his slim,
lithe figure and his distinguished, confident bearing. But his brown
face wears a more manly expression; his eyes have a surer and more
discriminating glance. Leaving behind his careless youth, he has grown
into a man who thinks and who knows what he wants.

He arrived only the evening before. This morning he left Rose Villa
and all along the road he has been breathing his native air, like
one newly awakened. On the chilly earth, decked with mauve and lilac
mists--like a maiden slowly opening her eyes and stirring aside the
gauzy curtains of her bed--he catches the fresh beauty of spring and
that joy of life which begins with the dawn.

His eyes dwell admiringly on the delicate green of the trees and
fields, the individual glory of the month of May, and he feels a
happiness in the tender, new-born leaves budding on the hedges. To the
left his glance searches for those three steeples, on which the tent
of the sky seems to hang over the countryside: Belle-Combette, almost
hidden in greenery; Montagnol, proud and grey, scarcely distinguishable
from the walls of Pas-de-la-Fosse; and sweet Saint-Cassin, resting,
like an old man seeking the shade, in a forest of chestnut trees.
The scarps of the neighboring mountains lose their rugged shape in
the morning light, and Nature under the clear sky smiles all over
and trustfully displays her grace and charm, wherein may be read the
promise of fruit and harvest.

Jean turned round and saw from afar a sheet of pearl and gold, which
was Lake Bourget, its sleeping waters bathed in sunshine. At the kiss
of the beams the waters shivered voluptuously. The young man continued
on his way. Standing out against the Chaloux hills, La Chênaie was
welcoming the fresh air through its open windows. Pleasant memories
came back to Jean of the time when he was twenty-five; of Isabelle’s
red lips, expert alike in speech and kisses. He thought over his life
and reached a conclusion which surprised him.

“I have seen neither her nor Savoy for four years--or nearly that. It
seems very much longer to me. I was a boy then, playing at life.”

But the girl of long ago did not remain in his memory. As he passed
into the oakwood he stopped and looked again. The arch of the trees
bordering the road narrowed and framed the landscape. He recognised
in the hues and outlines of the plains and mountains that mixture of
precision and of softness which gives the Savoyard country its unique
character. A shepherd girl’s voice rose to him. She was singing some
old love couplets:

    “Up there on the mountain
      There is a meadow;
    The partridge and the quail
      Go there to sing.
    I took my cross-bow,
      Thither I went;
    Thinking to kill four,
      I missed them all.”

The few uncertain notes could not rob this strained voice of its clear
tone, limpid as the waters of a stream.

At the bend of the road some sheep appeared, then the shepherdess,
standing out like shadows against the light trelliswork of branches.
She was a girl of fifteen or sixteen, to whom health and strength gave
a rustic beauty.

    “’Tis the heart of my love
      That I have wounded.
    Love, my sweet love,
      Have I hurt you?”

She passed by Jean, who was listening smilingly to her song.

“Good morning, Monsieur Jean,” said she with a bow.

“Do you know me?” he asked in surprise.

“Why, of course! I am the daughter of Trélaz, the farmer at Le Maupas.”

“Jeannette?”

“At your service.”

“But you were about the size of a boot then! And now you are taller
than ripe corn.”

Nothing makes us so conscious of the flight of time as the growth of
children whom we see but now and then. The flattered girl began to
laugh, and although her teeth were badly cared for yet her joy was
contagious. As she passed on, she repeated the last verse.

    “’Tis the heart of my love
      That I have wounded.
    Love, my sweet love,
      Have I hurt you?”

And the wind carried the dying words to the young man, still standing
motionless at the foot of the oak trees.

    “Just a little, scarcely that,
      But I shall die of it!
    A kiss from your lips
      Would heal me quite!”

Jean’s eyes swept over the scene before him--the trees with their new
leaves, the meadows with their waving grasses, the girl full of the
wine of youth. He breathed in the scent of the earth and the morning
woods. And in his native air he tasted the love of life.

It was only since he had learnt how transitory it is that he had
enjoyed the beauty of nature in its fulness. Young people do not
understand the value of existence as they run heedlessly after
pleasure, frivolity, distraction and all that hastens, while it hides,
the flight of time. It is danger, passion, love’s melancholy, the sight
of death; it is the deep sorrows which bring them to a sudden halt
before life’s unmasked face, as when at the bottom of a garden path one
suddenly comes upon a cold marble statue under the branches. How can he
who would ignore the night feel with the same ecstasy as we the glory
of the daylight that must go and of the shapes that the darkness must
swallow?

Jean had reached the zenith of his youth, and was wiser. Another and
a deeper sky, another country, sterile and bare, had developed and
perfected his understanding. Above all, new and tragic emotions had
struck at his heart with a terrible force, like that of the sculptor’s
chisel which causes the useless chips to fly from the stone which is
to grow into a statue. Inspired by gratitude for the lessons which
he had learnt, he connected his full, passionate appreciation of
this spring morning with that crimson dawn on which he had seen his
friend die. In the death of the leader after victory, in the pierced
forehead behind which the brain so lately lived, in the heart now cold
which had been the home of love, in the face of all that strength and
courage, shattered like a tree in its vigor; in all these things was
manifest the frailty of human life, by contrast with which the light
of day shines the brighter. With Marcel’s face on the ground before
him--beautiful in its serene, grave stillness, in its calm, touching
repose, never to be forgotten amid the surrounding scene--he had felt
alike the wish to live fully and without fear and the desire to deny
the everlasting presence of death.

The old gate at Le Maupas was open as of old. Jean went up the chestnut
avenue, breathing in the scent of the blossoms. He knew that in a
few minutes the tears would flow again, sad but salutary too. At the
crunching of the gravel in the courtyard, an old woman who was seated
on the steps, working with slow hands in the cool morning air, arose.
Her eyes sought the visitor. She saw who it was.

“Is that you, Jean? How I have waited for you!”

At the first glance, he took in the marks of her sufferings. She was
more bent, and her hair was whiter. But he recognized with surprise on
her thin face an expression of peace which he had seen before.

“Madame Guibert!” he cried.

He sped up the steps and, bending forward with his natural grace,
kissed her. Madame Guibert vainly tried to keep back her tears and
murmured Marcel’s name.

“Come in,” she said at last. “We shall be able to speak of him better
in the drawing-room.”

She led the way with lagging steps. Then she opened a door and called:

“Paule! Here is Jean Berlier!”

“I arrived late last night,” he explained. “And I have come to you this
morning. I was so anxious to see you again.”

“You are good to us. I knew you would come at once. We have been
looking for you for some days.”

Paule came in and clasped Jean’s hand. Her lovely black hair made her
pale skin seem paler. Her dark eyes had lost their fire. Straighter
and still prouder than she used to be, she cherished her broken heart
in no humility. Full as he was of his sad story, Jean had time to read
with surprise in the serious young face and in the stiff attitude of
the body a lack of interest in life. Paule, also surprised, noticed the
change in the young man. With the passage of time he had grown more
sure, more resolute, more like Marcel.

In the little country drawing-room, through whose closed venetians a
ray of sunlight filtered, the hero who died for his country rose up
from the African soil where he had lain to come back to his own people,
recalled to life by the words of the narrator. He came back young,
tall, thin, and muscular, his head borne high, his tone imperious,
gifted with that physical superiority, that aptitude for command, that
self-imposed calmness which are the outward signs of a leader of men.

Jean looked at his photograph placed on the closed piano and crowned
with a wreath of roses. He spoke of him as Marcel would have wished to
be spoken of--simply and nobly. He had that rare gift of choosing the
right word, which paints the truth with no undue softening, with no
undue emphasis. His voice, though sweet and caressing in its sympathy
with pain, still revealed the strength of the man beneath. It banished
all weakness and despair. It encouraged and comforted and even found
a solace in death. The two women, who wept on his arrival, kept their
tears under control as they listened to him.

He had not actually seen his friend fall. The day was beginning to dawn
when, suddenly awakened by hearing the shots fired, he got up to summon
his men. In spite of information received as to the safe condition of
affairs, the little troop at Timmimun always slept completely dressed.
As Berlier hastened to the point of danger, the Commander was attacking
the Berabers, who had already gained a footing in the camp.

“The sergeant who was at his side told me about his death. I was
directing our defence on the left. He attacked them in front. Having
routed them, he went in pursuit. He stood out a black silhouette
against the first brightness of the dawn. The sergeant pointed out a
little sandridge. There perhaps they were still hiding. As he stepped
forward he put his hand to his head, stood still for an instant, and
fell in a heap.”

Madame Guibert hid her face in her hands and the tears gushed to
Paule’s eyes, hard as she tried to master herself.

“He did not stir,” continued the Captain. “He did not suffer. Death
struck him full in the forehead. And he was thinking of his country,
and of you.”

“And of God, too--was he not?” murmured the stricken mother.

“Yes, of God too. I had to take command in his place. But his victory
was complete. When I was able to come back to him they had carried
him a few paces away, under a palm-tree. I bent over him in vain. Our
Surgeon-Major looked sadly at me. He had already examined him. Our life
together had made us like brothers. I loved him as you did. There I
mourned him as you did, on your behalf. And I saw what you had not the
sorry joy of seeing--the serenity that was his in death. It gave his
face a look of everlasting peace. When I see him again in my memory
I have only good and noble thoughts. You must know this, so that his
memory may be the sweeter to you.”

Jean was silent. Then he began again.

“The evening before he had gone with me to my tent, before making
his last round. It was a clear, starry night. We often talked about
Savoy. He spoke to me about you and Mademoiselle Paule. He had seen you
lately. He had no presentiment to sadden him, but he never had any fear
of death. In the pocket of his tunic I found this letter, which I have
brought you. It lay against his heart during its last beats.”

Madame Guibert recognised her own handwriting. She raised her face,
full of a mother’s anguish. When she could speak she asked:

“He now rests in the peace of God. Jean, tell me, where have they
buried him?”

“In front of Timmimun, Madame. As he is the highest in rank, his tomb
is placed between that of the commissariat officer’s on the right
and the sergeant’s on the left. They were both killed in the same
engagement. The men are buried at their feet.”

Paule interrupted:

“We have asked about the necessary steps for removing him to Chambéry.
He will rest in our family vault near my father and my little sister
Thérèse.”

Jean looked at the girl. He knew they were not well off. In gentle
accents, persuasive and yet commanding, he tried to dissuade them from
this costly and useless plan.

“Why do you insist on this return? The place of his death tells of the
victory won. He is resting in his triumph. What tomb could be more
fitting? How could he wish for a nobler monument?”

“He will soon be forgotten there.”

“You are wrong, Mademoiselle Paule. Every grave has its inscription.
They are carefully looked after. As long as we keep a garrison at
Timmimun, they will be honored. His bears his name, his rank, the two
dates April 25th 1868 and February 19th 1901, and these three glorious
words which sum up his career--‘Madagascar, Sahara, Timmimun.’ You must
remember that they still honor in Algiers the tombs of those who were
killed at the time of the conquest.”

Madame Guibert sighed, and Paule after a moment’s reflection, during
which Jean was able to study her face more at leisure, spoke again, as
faithful as Antigone.

“We should love to feel that my brother was near us, to be able to
kneel on the stones which cover him.”

“Have you not always his memory with you? What remains of Marcel is but
his earthly husk.”

“Ah, yes!” agreed Madame Guibert. She was thinking of his immortal soul.

Marcel’s sister yielded. But Jean saw the tears running down her cheeks.

“He was our pride--and my life,” she sighed; and in a lower voice she
added: “He knew that long ago.”

“God willed it so,” said his mother. “We do not understand His plans.
He seems so cruel sometimes that we are tempted to rebel. But His
goodness is infinite.”

Jean, much affected, took her wrinkled, trembling hand in his own
and, with the same respect which Marcel used to show, he kissed it
reverently. He stood up and, facing the two women as they gazed at
him, paid a last tribute to the dead, not without hope that he might
help Paule, less resigned and more discouraged than her mother.

“His short life was complete. By his will power and his courage he has
set us an example. Far from pitying him, should we not envy him? We
must honor the dead, but we must have faith in life!”

Paule turned on Jean those dark eyes of hers, into which the light was
coming back. A new strength seemed to flow to her from him. Could this
be the frivolous young officer who used to flirt with girls of the
lighter kind? In her memory of him she had cherished a contemptuous
kindness for him, which perhaps concealed an unavowed vexation at his
conduct. In her pride she had thought herself strong. She was now
discovering that, if she wished to be worthy of her own esteem and
Jean’s, she must pluck relentlessly from her heart all that bitterness
and rebellion wherewith it abounded as the woods in winter with dead
leaves.

“You are not leaving us already?” asked Madame Guibert timidly.

Jean, to console her, spoke to her of all the ties which still united
her to life. They talked about her other children; about her daughter
Marguerite, the nun in Paris, the nurse of the sick; of her sons
making a new France in far-off lands.

“How many children has Étienne?” he asked.

“He expects the third. I don’t know them, and yet I love them. Oh, I
cherish them as the last joys that God has given me. They are called
Maurice and Françoise. Did you know that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jean with a smile.

“Those are my husband’s name and mine. They are the blessing of our
race. They are going to call the new one Marcel.”

“And if it is a girl?”

“Still Marcelle. Here is the photograph of the two elder ones.” Already
she regarded as living the child that was to come.

“Aren’t they lovely?” said Paule, coming nearer to look at her nephew
and niece.

“Yes, the little girl is very like you. She has your dark eyes.”

“She will be much prettier.”

“I don’t think so,” answered the young man, giving back the portrait to
Madame Guibert. And he added with that beautiful smile which gave his
face such a youthful look: “Are you not pretty enough? You are hard to
please!”

Paule blushed, against her will, and her new color changed her as
a sunbeam changes a raindrop. In her despair she had lost even the
pleasure of her beauty, and now it came back to her again with joy.

Jean, seeing that they were both diverted for a moment from their
sorrows, continued to question them:

“It is in Along Bay, near Hanoi, that they have settled, isn’t it?”

“They are not there now,” answered Madame Guibert. “They are living
on a fine island. But Paule will explain better than I can. I get so
confused with all those foreign names.”

“Oh, no, Mother, you don’t really,” cried the girl. She went on,
quickly:

“Étienne has bought up the island of Kébao, opposite the Bay of Along.
It belonged to a company that was badly managed and went bankrupt.
It contains important mines and its soil is fertile. The mines, the
material and the ground were all sold at auction, at a very low price.
My brothers manage the mines and the rice-fields, and are making a
splendid thing out of some plantations of a tree called Japanese
lilac, which is used for building. Their labor is not sufficient for
all the work there is to be done. They are looking in vain for help
from France. Nobody here wants to go abroad. But still the country is
healthy and picturesque, and they feel sure of success.”

She had spoken clearly and simply. Jean was delighted.

“There is no future in France--I am going out to join them.”

“And what about your career?” said Madame Guibert, as he rose to say
good-bye.

“I am not so passionately fond of it as Marcel was. There is too much
wasted time, and forgotten effort.”

They went out on the veranda in front of the house, buried under
honeysuckle, roses, and clematis, and they leant over the balcony.
This morning at the end of May was a feast for the eyes that rested on
it. The air was clear and limpid. A bluish haze, sure presage of the
continuance of fine weather, softly outlined the dim mountains. Over
yonder the little steeple of Saint-Cassin tapered in the shadow of the
chestnuts. Nearer, the fields wore that glory of fresh green which
is seen only in springtime. The corn rising from the ground quivered
in the passing breeze. The trees in the orchards had already shaken
off the white and pink snow of their short-lived blossoms, and every
branch was smiling with leaf-buds. Two lime-trees in the corner of the
courtyard spread their scent abroad and the chestnuts of the avenue
illumined the dark mass of their foliage with white candles.

From the balcony they could hear the eternal song of new life, and
could appreciate the never-failing promise which the fruitful earth
makes to toiling man.

Before them and around was the youth of the year, the symbol of the
duration of life. They gazed and were silent. They were all thinking of
Marcel and this too lovely day filled them with sadness.

Bent and weary, her heart obsessed by memories, Madame Guibert left
it to Paule to accompany the Captain to the gate. She watched them
disappear, thinking tenderly of what might be. She commended Paule’s
future to God and went back to ponder in solitude over the sorrowful
story she had heard.

Paule and Jean had said good-bye at the end of the avenue. The young
man paused to follow the tall, graceful figure gliding through the
trees. At the same moment the girl, too, turned round. She blushed at
the coincidence and bravely came back that no awkwardness might remain.

“Jean,” she murmured with emotion, “I have never thanked you enough for
my brother, who was a little yours too, nor for my mother, to whom your
letters and your visit have done so much good. You have been good to
us. I could not tell you before, so I came back.”

The emotion which stirred her made her more tender, more human.

“Oh, no,” said the young man. “Do not thank me. Was I not Marcel’s
friend?--and our fathers loved each other.”

They stood face to face, not finding words. They felt a certain
shyness, which they wished by turns to banish and to prolong. Jean
could see against Paule’s cheek the long lashes shading the downcast
eyes.

“Listen,” he said at last. “In Marcel’s tunic there was something
beside your mother’s last letter--This photograph was found too. I
thought I would give it back to you--yourself.”

He gave her a faded photograph, in which she recognised a path in the
garden of Le Maupas and on it two little girls of ten or twelve--one
fair, the other dark; one sitting quiet, gazing with eyes astonished
at the world, the other caught in a lively pose. They were Alice and
herself.

“Oh!” she said. And in a dull voice she asked: “Did he never speak of
her to you?”

“No, never.”

She let the picture fall dully on the gravel of the path. Unable to
contain herself any longer, she wept helplessly.

Jean took her hand.

“I often thought,” said he, “out there in Africa, how stupid fate was.
Why did I not die in his place? Nobody would have wept for me.”

What could she answer? Her dark eyes shone with a sudden light. She
picked up the photograph before he had time to bend down.

“Thank you, Jean. Come and see us again soon. It would be a charity.”

He looked at her a moment and then departed. She went back slowly
through the garden. Her eyes wandered over the flowers. She picked a
rose and for the first time in the year felt a little joy at its scent.
She thought of her brother’s death in an unexpected way and repeated
Jean’s words, of whose lesson she felt the full force: “We must honor
the dead but we must also have faith in life.”

Do those words not sum up the incitement to live well which the example
of all heroes gives us? They were great in that they did not bargain
over their deeds, that in their careers, whether short or long, were
manifest the marks of souls free from all fear and weakness. So
Paule found consolation and comfort in that very thing which was the
source of her heart’s disorder. She swore to herself, as she smelt
the flower, that henceforward she would bear the burden of her days
bravely, without bitterness, without revolt. Her despised youth would
not be useless if she spent herself in willing sacrifice. And when she
rejoined her mother she greeted her with an embrace of protection for
the old age confided to her care. It was as though she sealed with a
kiss the promise of her new-born courage.




                              CHAPTER VI

                               ISABELLE


In the middle of the front tier of boxes at the Club Theatre at
Aix-les-Bains Madame de Marthenay and Madame Landeau displayed their
beauty, one shyly, the other with the utmost composure, to the eyes and
opera-glasses of the audience. They were a good foil for each other.
Isabelle wore a soft silk dress, of buttercup yellow, whose V-shaped
opening revealed the curve of her breast; and round her slender neck,
to set off its whiteness, was a black velvet ribbon in which flashed
a diamond of extraordinary coloring. The gentle Alice was dressed in
black lace, without a jewel. She had chosen this sombre color the
better to efface herself, but it suited her fair complexion admirably.

Behind the women were seated Count de Marthenay, M. Landeau, and
Captain Jean Berlier. That evening Gluck’s “Iphigenia in Tauris” was
being sung. As the first swelling notes of the orchestra called for
silence and attention throughout the house, the ex-lieutenant of
dragoons silently opened the door and glided out of the box. He made
at once for the gaming room. His wife turned round a moment later and
noticed his flight. Alone in her sorrow, she was mourning as she saw
Marcel’s friend once more; mourning for what might have been and was
not. Isabelle was radiant. She was experiencing the joyous sensations
of the cat who has made sure of her prey and gloatingly prolongs her
anticipations, imagining she felt the breath of the young man behind
her on her neck, just below her dark hair. M. Landeau was divided
between desire for this beautiful, cruel creature and anxiety to run
off to the reading-room to see the latest reports from the Stock
Exchange, the scene of his unending battles.

Jean alone was listening to the divine simplicity of the music, as
gracious as the lines of a Greek temple. Iphigenia was addressing to
the chaste goddess her touching prayer for the boon of death in her
exile on the savage coasts of Tauris. The singer, in the youthful glory
of her body draped in harmonious folds of white, in the majesty of her
attitude, in the purity of her face, recalled, though with the added
grace of living flesh, those ancient marbles whose motionless charm
appeals so strongly to all souls that love beauty and whose empire
grows the greater by their defiance of the flight of ages. Only half
aware of the inspiration of the art to which they were listening, the
audience applauded enthusiastically.

Isabelle, leaning back, saw with surprise the joy in Jean’s eyes. His
glance passed over her and was centred on the stage. She addressed a
question to him in a low voice to compel him to draw nearer to her and
to inhale the perfume of her body.

After the first act Madame de Marthenay wished to ask Jean to take
her to the gambling-room and to call her husband. She burned to put a
question to him. Yet she dared not and was obliged to take M. Landeau’s
arm. Favoured by this double departure Isabelle signed to Jean to sit
down beside her.

“Do you know,” said she, “that I have mourned your death?”

“My death? That was rather premature.”

“They announced Commander Guibert’s. You were with him at Timmimun.
Could I guess whether you had shared his fate or not?”

“These lovely eyes have really wept for me?”

“For a whole evening.”

“They shine so bright that they ought to dry up all tears!”

“They are so happy to see you again, Jean.”

She certainly was doing her best to devour him with them. At once she
re-established that atmosphere of guilty pleasure that had existed
between them before. Seeing that his hand was bare she took off her
gloves and laid her own, heavily be-ringed, on her old friend’s.

“You love jewels,” said he, looking at this slender white hand with its
pink nails.

“Yes,” she answered. “I think I am wearing all the treasures of the
world in miniature.”

He smiled sceptically.

“The world is too huge for you to hold in your hand.”

“Look at the green of this emerald, Jean.”

“I prefer the green of the meadows.”

“And the bright blue of this sapphire.”

“It will not compare with the blue of the sky.”

“Look at these rubies.”

“I prefer blood.”

“And these pearls.”

“I would rather see tears.”

“Well, be content--for I shed them for you.”

Amused with their sentimental sword-play they exchanged smiles as two
fencers exchange salutes. Isabelle inhaled life greedily as if it
were a bouquet of tuberoses. Her bosom rose and fell under her bodice
of soft silk, which gave a hint of the firm contours. Jean could
follow the fine blue veins which ran over the white skin and lost
themselves under the silk. He pictured through the cunning draperies
that faultless body, fit pendant to her head with the queenly profile,
crowned by jet black hair. He had only to stoop to pluck this human
flower, this rare orchid in the flesh. In the stem which bent towards
him, in the unfolding of the petals, in the quivering from head to foot
as before the warm evening breeze, he saw her offer of herself. Why
should he not pluck? Did he not know the value of beauty, the value of
youth, which enhances joy so much? But had he not known this he would
not have worn that expression of fervent melancholy in the presence of
joy.

“How long I have been waiting for you!” she cried in a different voice,
in which the accent of desire was plain to his ears.

“You were really waiting for me?”

He could scarcely misunderstand her when she replied:

“I am still waiting for you.”

The orchestra was playing the prelude to the second act. Madame de
Marthenay came back into the box with M. de Lavernay, to whom M.
Landeau had given up his place. The latter, to get away from this
serious music, which differed so much from light opera, and to direct
in peace from the reading-room his dealings on the Stock Exchange,
dispatched to his wife a second admirer, whom he destined in his mind
to be a check on the other. By her coldness to him, which he refused
like so many husbands to attribute to his own shortcomings, Isabelle
infatuated him and made sure of her dominion. She had the art of
mastering this coarse, full-blooded adorer, who growled to show himself
off, like a wild animal before his tamer. He satisfied all her fancies,
all her whims, inspired as much by his own vanity as by the passion to
which he surrendered himself so whole-heartedly. And if he hated her
flirtations, he paid no more attention to them than one would pay to
the tiresome noise of bells on a show horse’s neck.

The old story of Iphigenia unfolded itself slowly. But Jean was beyond
the musician’s power. Before him, between the black velvet ribbon and
the dress, he saw Isabelle’s fair flesh and imagined the silky softness
of it. Half turned towards him, she showed her face in profile. He
followed the proud, slightly curved line of her nose, and stopped to
dwell on those red lips, those lonely lips of an Eastern slave. Had she
not said: “I am still waiting for you?” What was he waiting for? Had
the countless seductions of life suddenly lost their charm for him,
summed up for him as they were in this lovely woman, as a drop of scent
in a Persian bottle contains the attar of a thousand roses? Had the
African sun frozen his blood instead of infusing fire into it? Young
and free, how could he use his youth and freedom in a better way? The
head of whose every movement his thoughts were so filled turned, and
now that the profile was lost to him, his glance had to content itself
with the heavy mass of her hair, with the neck and the line of her
shoulders, so sensuous in their appeal. Giddy, he closed his eyes for a
moment and swore in a passionate fury that he would bring to fruition
the mad desire which overwhelmed him.

At this moment of his abandonment he was swept by the chords of a deep
and sustained harmony, which even in the stress of the sorrow which
they were depicting never lost their grave serenity. His overstrung
nerves were all a-quiver. His soul, its sensitiveness increased tenfold
by the expectation of pleasure, drank in the divine music as a dried-up
flower drinks in the dew.

On the stage Orestes and Pylades were disputing as to who should have
the joy of dying for the other. They had reached the dark shores of
Tauris. The idol of the barbarians had demanded the sacrifice of one of
them. The high priestess, none other than the unhappy Iphigenia, had
indicated Pylades, and Orestes claimed the pain for himself--a quarrel
whose pathos can never grow old, where friendship, inspired by the
intoxication of generosity, surpasses love itself in its transports.

Jean strove to shut out the troubling influence of those sounds which
were so at war with the turmoil of his senses. But his deadened
will-power could not defend him long. He loved life in all its
manifestations of beauty too much not to understand and admire such
perfect art, whose holy inspiration tore from the heart, as one tears
up weeds from a garden, all evil desires, all hatreds and light
thoughts.

He was no longer absorbed by the exclusive worship of a woman. A wild
longing to live several lives at one and the same time seized upon him.
Voluptuous and heroic thoughts came and went quickly, and gained the
mastery over him in turn. Swiftly his mind reviewed his experiences
of the past. He lived again through his friendship with Marcel, and
that crossing of the desert, where perhaps, in solitude and danger, in
intense hardship and struggle, he had learnt the supreme lesson as he
realised the meaning of courage and unfaltering will. And the thought
of the brother brought him to that of the sister. From the beginning of
the evening he had put thoughts of Paule away from him. A few minutes
ago he had succeeded in forgetting her entirely. Why had she come into
his mind now, and why had this exalted music so untoward an effect? He
tried to banish her image rudely, though not without regret.

“Oh,” he thought, “if only she were as lovely as Isabelle.”

And again his eyes followed the line of the neck and shoulders whose
almost luminous surface magnetised him. He gave no thought to the
injustice and impropriety of the comparison. And yet he admitted with a
secret joy:

“_She_ has finer hair. Those black waves of hers must reach to her
knees.”

Isabelle turned to smile at him.

“_She_ has finer eyes,” he said to himself again. But those
eyes of which he thought looked reproachfully at him and he clearly
interpreted their expression.

“Why do you treat me with so little respect?” the faraway Paule seemed
to murmur. “Have I tried to lead you on by flirting with you as she
does? Have I ever forgotten my dignity or modesty in your presence?
If you do not love me, leave me in my lonely peace. Do not degrade
my pure youth by making a mere pleasure of my memory. But if you do
love me,--yes, if you love me,--why do you not find strength in your
love to resist temptations which, for all you know, may ruin the whole
course of your life. Come to me unfettered and proud. May I never read
degradation in your eyes! I do not know if I am the more beautiful, but
I love you, with a love that this woman can never know....”

Jean Berlier was no longer one of those men who go through life with
blinders on their eyes, unable to see the broad fields of man’s daily
labor which border the narrow path of their own passions. Once he had
looked only to his own immediate desires. Now he saw his life fully
and saw it whole, and from its source and its development he read the
presage of its future. Thus considered, love took on a new aspect. In
the place of mere gratification of the senses he put the charm of minds
that think together and that inward strength which springs from peace
at heart and the quiet life of home; in the place of the brief, violent
transports of passion, he put the instinct of the continuity of the
race.

Since his return to Savoy three weeks ago, Jean had often gone to Le
Maupas. He did not go there solely to comfort two poor sorrowing women.
Paule attracted him immensely--by her pride, by her serious depth
of feeling, by the youth which he knew her to be holding in check.
He noticed with surprise at each of his visits, that this reserved,
sensible girl, had a bright, lively spirit, ready to taste joy without
timidity as she had tasted sorrow without flinching. With that touching
trait of lovers, who try to magnify their love by imagining its
extension back into the past, he connected with his present fascination
little memories of long ago, of the times when he played with a
laughing child Pauline. Forgetful of his own forgetfulness, he imagined
an ancient fondness which had survived from childhood. But, still
more, with instinctive clearness of vision he felt that his future
achievement and the rounding of his life, so that it would not be spent
in vain, would depend on her, and on no one else. So he loved her as a
man loves at thirty, confidently and tenderly. Her gracious influence
filled his heart with a new peace.

Isabelle Orlandi’s passion had thrown itself meantime across his path.
Since her marriage for money she had dedicated to her former admirer
all the unsatisfied ardor of her senses, all the fury of her tortured
heart. She had been much more faithful to her friend Jean than to M.
Landeau. She had waited for his return. When she saw him again she
was even more fascinated by his serious and thoughtful face than she
had been before by his careless good temper, and she promised herself
she would wait no longer. For his benefit she displayed the full
fascination of her loveliness.

In the box at the theatre, she had indeed triumphed for a few wild
moments, though she did not know it. During the whole of the act she
had doubted her power to charm because of the hesitations of this
Adonis whose spoken words were so ambiguous. When the curtain went
down, her only wish was to take up the interrupted conversation again.

Devoured by anxiety she turned round immediately and leaning over with
practised art, so as to display all the beauties of her throat and
bosom, asked:

“What were you thinking of? I felt you were not listening to the music.”

Jean smiled and said frankly:

“I was thinking about two charming women.”

“That is one too many.”

With arrow-like glances she tried to pierce the impenetrable mask.
M. de Lavernay was keeping his eyes on the pair, while mixing up all
his classical knowledge in his conversation with Madame de Marthenay.
Isabelle grew impatient and, eager to make sure of her happiness, rose
from her seat.

“It is stifling here. Will you take me into the hall, Captain Berlier?”

With a stare she passed by her discomfited guardian and went out on
Jean’s arm. In the promenade and on the steps of the big staircase
she leant on his arm with all the weight of her languishing body. As
he remained silent, waiting for her to speak, she asked him with a
timidity which had come over her all unforeseen:

“Am I no longer beautiful, Jean? Tell me.”

“Look round you, Madame, and judge for yourself.”

Certainly the pair provoked the glances of the well-dressed crowd which
was streaming out of the auditorium into the big hall. And the eyes
of the _demi-mondaines_ who passed Madame Landeau fastened on her
dress as though to estimate its price and its cut and to guess how her
beauty would look when stripped of it.

She gave her escort a light tap across his fingers.

“You, you, I mean. _You_ are the only person here who has any
interest for me.”

“What about the old gentleman in the box?”

“He does my shopping for me!”

Strengthened by the thought of Paule, he strove to elude his temptress,
whose soft arm he felt--not without a flutter of the heart--hang so
heavily on his. Her burning, eager face under its mantling blush wore a
look of discouragement.

“Do you remember, Jean, the wood at La Chênaie?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, remembering that it was there that Marcel’s fate
had been settled.

“I should love to go back there with you. Did you like me better when I
was a young girl? Be candid.”

“You are more beautiful now and yet different. I always see your
husband behind you.”

She turned round.

“Your jokes are in bad taste, Jean,” she murmured after having made
sure of M. Landeau’s absence.

“You are afraid of him,” she added.

“Oh, no, I am not.”

“You don’t like him?”

“No.”

“So that, before you would consent to--flirt, it would be necessary for
him to please you?”

He began to laugh. “Exactly,” he said.

“That is very strange.”

“You are his wife.”

She laughed in her turn, and half hiding her face behind her fan she
replied:

“So little--and so badly.”

“But quite enough.”

She imitated the little plaintive voice of children caught in the act.

“I won’t do it again.”

He looked long at her. He noticed the quivering movement of her
eyelids, the yearning of her whole body for him. Why should he resist
any longer the appeal of pleasure when it came to him in such lovely
guise?

“Isabelle,” he whispered softly.

She gazed at him in her turn and radiantly slipped her soft hand into
his.

“Jean, dear Jean,” she cried. For an instant they both had a foretaste
of happiness. Then the bell rang to announce the next act. Full of
their joy, they slowly returned to the hall of the theatre, without
speaking. At the head of the marble staircase they stopped to take
breath. Upon the balcony they stood alone above the gay crowd of
spectators hurrying back, but they did not see them.

“Do you know, Jean, you made me tremble. I thought it was true what
they told me.”

Vaguely uneasy and already tortured at heart, he repeated:

“What they told you?”

“Yes, that you were in love with Paule Guibert.”

He let fall the arm that was leaning on his and asked in a changed
voice:

“Who told you that?”

Pale and speechless she uttered an inarticulate sound, as if she saw
the ruined fragments of her happiness lying at her feet.

She was beaten by the magic of a single name and that name, in a mad
aberration, she must needs have uttered herself! It was enough to see
Jean’s face to understand the extent of her defeat, and in a rage at
the shattering of her dream she made her error worse.

“That haughty little creature knew how to fascinate you, with her
airs of a foreign princess. I had my doubts about her. She has been
arranging this affair for a long time, I wager. She is mad, like all
old maids in search of a husband. Go to her. She will know how to
manage you!”

Restored as he was to his right mind by his temptress herself, Jean
looked at her sadly because of her grace, mercifully because of her
passionate heart. And it was in a gentle voice that he answered her
insults.

“Isabelle, forgive me. It lay with you in those old days to share my
life. And you saw this evening how weak I was and how powerful you
were. It is not worthy of you to speak as you did. In the name of our
dead love, Isabelle, be generous.”

With all the thoughtfulness of lovers, he asked for a woman’s sympathy
while telling her he loved her no longer.

But she protested no further. The heaving of her bosom revealed her
inward distress, she accepted defeat and abandoned herself to it. Her
failure had found her unprepared. Too long she had anticipated the joy
of victory. Her girlish flirtation had changed into a deep, sensual
passion, more prone to the extremes of hope and despair than skilled in
the subtleties of sentimental diplomacy.

They were alone on the balcony. The crowd had passed into the theatre,
where Iphigenia, the priestess, veiled in red draperies, was making
ready to perform the blood-sacrifice.

Isabelle looked down on the foyer, whose size seemed immeasurably
enlarged by its emptiness. She put her two hands to her throat as if
she were choking and at last lifted her eyes towards Jean, who was
looking sadly at the distress on her lovely face. She was suffering so
intensely that no base or wicked thoughts stirred him any longer.

“Jean,” she sighed in a faint, hardly audible voice, “you are right. No
woman is more worthy of your love. You will be happy, and I shall be
most unhappy.”

She could say no more, but bending down took the young man’s hand and
pressed it to her lips. He felt a tear upon it, and as she drew herself
up he saw that her face was streaming. But she had already partially
recovered herself and she smiled faintly.

“Are those pearls, Jean?”

“Your tears are a thousand times more precious.”

Taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes. After this indiscreet
farewell embrace they both felt faint. How many couples have been bound
together for ever by as few moments of weakness! But a door opening
suddenly saved them, and they went back to their box.

“I have wasted my whole life,” said Isabelle, while the attendant came
up, key in hand.

All the rest of the evening, with a strange oblivion of her powers, she
felt wretched. She hated her clothes and her jewels, and exalted the
magnificent poverty of true love above them all. For the rest of the
evening, Jean, for all his victory, felt weaker and more humiliated
than if he had lost. Yet he was enchanted at the sight of this beauty
that he would never possess. His desire still smouldered ere it died
away for ever. Before resolutely treading the narrow path of his
destiny, he turned again to look at pleasure, not without a touch of
sadness.

At the exit, he helped Isabelle to put on the white silk cloak which
covered the brilliant bareness of her neck and shoulders. Not till then
was he able to rejoice that he had remained his own master and turn his
thoughts freely to the pure, proud maiden who claimed the allegiance of
his heart, at once so strong and so weak.

Madame de Marthenay had scarcely said a word to Jean Berlier. He
thought she was taken up with her husband, who according to public
report was losing heavily at the Club and at the Villa des Fleurs and
besides was making himself conspicuous with one of those many startling
_demi-mondaines_ who infest Aix-les-Bains. She endured her sad
life uncomplainingly, her submissive soul resigned beforehand to the
worst. What did her fortune and the unfaithfulness of an unworthy
husband matter to her? She had no hopes of any joy to come. Her
over-refined and sensitive nature could not console itself with worldly
pleasures for her deserted home and the emptiness of her heart.
Her little girl alone kept her from despair. On her she lavished an
excessive affection, heedless of the ills which she thereby laid up for
her in the future.

But that evening the sight of Jean had brought back to her with a
bitter pang the scene in the wood at La Chênaie, when she had not had
the strength to grasp her happiness, though it would have cost her
but a slight effort and a promise that she would wait patiently. She
wanted to question the young man about Marcel Guibert’s last days. The
questions never passed her lips. Would she not betray her duty if she
asked them? By the scruples of her conscience she heaped a new burden
on her widowed heart.

Thus she never knew that Marcel was carrying, when he died, the picture
of a child with candid eyes, who was the cause of his proud scorn of
death.




                              CHAPTER VII

                            PAULE’S SECRET


Jean was putting M. Loigny into a victoria which he had fetched for him
in the town. The old gentleman was wearing a frock-coat, a silk stock
wound several times round his neck in the old-fashioned way, pearl-grey
gloves, and carrying a stick with a silver knob.

“I feel so strange in this get-up,” he complained, thinking regretfully
of his gardening-clothes. And he gave several orders about his rose
bushes as if he were setting out on a long journey.

Jean tried to reassure him.

“Above all things,” he said finally, “do not forget what you are going
for.”

“As if I should!” the little man retorted energetically. “Even if my
loveliest flowers should fade in my absence I will satisfy you.”

M. Loigny was going to Le Maupas to ask Madame Guibert for her
daughter’s hand on behalf of his nephew. When the carriage had
disappeared round the road, Jean, impatient and agitated, instead of
going back to Rose Villa, had slowly followed the same road. Thus he
would perhaps meet his ambassador returning and perhaps would have time
in the evening to go up himself to the house and speak alone to her
who was to be his bride. He gazed questioningly at the sun, which was
slowly sinking towards Mount Lépine.

“These July days are the longest of all,” he said to himself, looking
for encouragement in his project.

After the evening at Aix the young man had searched his heart. He
loved Paule for her courage and pride; and also for that mysterious
attraction exercised on us by the features of the face, the color of
the eyes, the mass of the hair, the carriage of the body, the matchless
grace of a woman in whom we foresee the promise of a secure and happy
future for ourselves--or at least a delicious torment of our soul. He
could feel within him the approval of all his ancestry in the past,
whose noble traditions he meant to carry on successfully. This sensible
young girl with the eyes of flame inspired a tender love in his heart;
above all she incited him to seek the true end of human existence,
which is not to set up one’s own welfare as one’s object, but, striving
valiantly and unselfishly, to make oneself the link between the
generations past and those to come. Where could he find a worthier
companion, a stronger and a surer one who could give better counsel?
Paule had grown like a plant whose roots drew their nourishment from
fertile soil. Her family was the guarantee of her virtue. It had only
needed a little sunshine for her to attain her full development. Would
not love bring her warmth and light? And what joy to see her grow and
blossom and to feel oneself a little the cause of it, to give back to
her the lost days of a cruelly harassed youth, fled almost before she
had time to note their flight.

Paule would love him, she loved him already perhaps. Had he not noticed
more than one slight indication of her secret feelings, in spite of her
reserve and dignity--a blush on her cheek, a hurried fluttering of her
eyelids, and above all the unconscious softness of that pure, loyal,
sincere glance as it rested on him. Then, as he dipped back into his
memories, he seemed to recall a coolness which she had long ago shown
toward Isabelle Orlandi. Isabelle Orlandi! He had not seen her again,
he would never see her any more. He was still full of a superstitious
dread of her, and he put away from him the too beautiful vision which
humiliated him cruelly as it reminded him of his own weakness. Loved
by Paule Guibert, on the contrary, he felt himself strong enough to
conquer all obstacles. For this is the true test of real love, that it
exalts all our faculties, and gives us confidence in ourselves.

The decision which his heart reached was sustained by other
considerations. Married love does not cut the lover off from the outer
social world, but, through the very difficulties which it encounters,
brings with it an understanding of life in general. It is the safeguard
of this life, in contradistinction to the love of mere passion, which
threatens it with oblivion, and ruin. The Guiberts were not well off,
and his own fortune was reduced to very little. No doubt it would be
not without regret that he would leave the service. He loved this
self-sacrificing and honorable profession, and the stern discipline
which imposes itself on the will. The brilliant career he had carved
out for himself so early gave him the right to count on the future.
He did not, however, feel that irresistible vocation which forces
young men to travel along one road, all others for them leading but
to distaste and dissatisfaction. That had been the case with Marcel,
for instance. But Jean was not tempted to reject the suggestion which
the necessities of his existence, as it must be in the future, made to
him. He was able to plan out his life without trouble. In the course of
his visits to Le Maupas, the affairs of Étienne and François Guibert
in Tonkin were often discussed. In all their letters the two young
men told of the prosperity of their undertakings and complained of
not being able to extend them for want of the necessary help. In vain,
they said, they had appealed to old school friends. They all preferred
routine work to independence, mediocrity to risk. But Jean, as he
grew to know his heart more surely, thought the more deliberately:
“If I hand in my resignation, I--_we_--shall go out to join
them.” The call of the colonies attracted him by the very energy and
activity which it necessitates. He had always had a love of mother
earth. Distant peasant ancestors drew him to the soil. If, out there,
he should feel homesick for France and the Army, could he not gain
strength in the love of that new France, which he would be helping to
build, in the manly joy that there is in the patient conquest, day by
day, of a soil to which water and fertility must be slowly brought?
Would he not gain it, above all, from the love of his wife? She, he
was certain, would not fear to leave the country with him and to share
his life of struggle and adventure. The blood of Dr. Guibert, so
indifferent to danger, the blood of that mother who was sustained in
trials by an unconquerable faith, ran in the veins of this girl whom he
loved.

With the selfishness of lovers, Jean forgot one person in the
calculation of his future, or rather he was thoughtlessly planning to
deprive this person of her sole support, of the sole sweetness of her
joyless days.

In Madame Guibert’s heroism he discovered new reasons for confidence in
Paule, worthy of such a mother; and he did not see that he was going to
ask the greatest sacrifice of all from this poor woman, to take from
Niobe her last child, the only one left her by the gods, the one she
might still clasp distractedly to her bosom.


Along the road to Le Maupas Jean walked towards his happiness, while
the lovely summer evening was shedding its light over the glad world.

Old Marie ushered M. Loigny into the drawing-room and went to look for
her mistress, muttering on her way,

“What does the old man want of us with his frock-coat and tall hat?”

But M. Loigny paid no attention to the servant whom his fashionable
disguise stirred to such wrath.

He had just stopped short before a bowl of roses which bloomed in the
middle of the table. Bending over them he examined them so closely that
it seemed as if he were sniffing at them, and all at once he began to
show signs of great stupefaction. Madame Guibert found him in this
curious state. He scarcely bowed to her, and leading her up to the
flowers he cried:

“Do you see that?”

“Yes,” said she, surprised.

“How did you get it?”

“I don’t know, Monsieur Loigny.”

“It is quite impossible that you shouldn’t know. Come, tell me!”

And then, less brutally, the eccentric little man added:

“I beg of you, Madame; it is very serious.”

Madame Guibert politely racked her memory.

“My son Étienne brought us home some rose-cuttings--they found a good
soil at Le Maupas. These are their flowers. They are lovely, but they
have no scent.”

“Certainly, they have no scent. But I don’t mind about that. And where
had your son Étienne come from?”

“From Tonkin, Monsieur, from the Bay of Along, which produces flowers
and fruit in abundance.”

“Ah! a Chinese rose! That is it. I thought it must be. And you don’t
know its name, of course. Nobody knows the names of flowers in France.”

Madame Guibert excused herself smilingly, and the flower-maniac
continued:

“They teach music to young girls, so that they may bore their fathers
to death, and later their husbands, with sonatas. But they neglect
to teach them botany. And in botany, Madame, should be recognised
the crown of the earth, the grace of the home, the peace of the
human spirit! I find a happy philosophy in it. To repair this gap in
instruction I am making a catalogue of all the names of roses. We must
know where to stop. Nature is too vast for us. But these names are, for
the most part, deplorably vulgar!”

“Really, Monsieur,” said the poor lady at random, thinking of something
else and yet humoring his fancy.

“Deplorable, I repeat. The prettiest are women’s names. They do not
remind us of the complicated and delightful art of the garden, nor
of the diversity of the vegetable kingdom with its thousand forms
and colors, nor of our various shades of feeling--though to these it
would have been in good taste to have made suitable allusion. They are
inanimate names, like those of geography or chemistry.”

“I don’t understand anything about it,” admitted Madame Guibert, “but I
love flowers.”

But the old enthusiast would not stop.

“We have not the inventive mind, Madame. And we have forgotten how
to be astonished, how to be moved before the never-ending miracles
of nature. We have settled down in the universe as though it were a
dining-room. Familiarity and practical considerations have blunted
our feelings. Yet the universe is really delicate, ever-changing,
and delightful. Ah, Madame, believe me, we are far from equalling the
Chinese gardeners.”

“The Chinese gardeners?” she repeated.

“Yes, the Chinese gardeners. Do you know what names they give their
flowers.”

“How should I know, Monsieur?”

“Names which sum up the manifold beauty of the earth. Here are some of
them:--‘Water sleeping in the moonlight.’ ‘The sun in the forest.’ ‘The
maiden’s first desire,’ and this, which I trust you will appreciate,
‘The young girl showing her bosom.’”

Indulgent, but astonished, Madame Guibert smiled at this harmless folly
and tried to check its outpourings.

“Won’t you give me some news of Jean? We have not seen him for several
days. He is deserting us.” She foresaw the object of this unexpected
visit. M. Loigny, disdaining all society, lived in his garden, which he
cultivated exclusively himself, liking the world of plants better than
that of men. Only a very important event could make him go out of his
way, and this could only be an offer of marriage. And she thought of
the absent Paule with emotion. She would find happiness awaiting her
when she got back.

But this strange rose-lover was in no hurry to do this errand. He had
at last succeeded in pulling the rose that had captivated him from its
vase.

“Jean is quite well, Madame,” he replied carelessly, and then went on:
“Yes, this kind is, so to speak, unknown in France. I will put it in my
catalogue. Will you allow me, Madame, to carry away this specimen?”

“Please do, Monsieur,” acquiesced Madame Guibert, courteously. She was
afraid she had been mistaken and was trembling for her hopes.

“A thousand thanks, Madame. I must fly to see about it before it fades.”

On the threshold the old man stopped and in a mysterious voice, which
made the poor lady start, said:

“I have a secret to tell you. I have managed to grow a new rose by
skilful grafting. You shall see it. It has no name yet. I am going
to give it your daughter’s. My nephew will be delighted. It shall be
called Madame Paule Berlier!”

And without having revealed his errand, otherwise than in this odd way,
he vanished, still holding the flower in his hands and gazing at it.

Madame Guibert as she watched him disappear in the distance could not
repress a smile.

“The poor man! He has forgotten all for his rose.”

Jean on his way to meet M. Loigny had arrived at the oakwood which
lines the road to Vimines hill. He heard the noise of grinding wheels
held back by the brake and soon he saw the carriage through the
branches. Impatiently he hurried on in spite of the hill.

“Well, Uncle?” he cried.

M. Loigny lifted his flower in the air with a triumphant gesture which
reassured the young man.

“Look here! A rose that I haven’t got in my collection!”

“What’s that to me?” said Jean brusquely. “Will she have me or not?”

The old man let fall the stalk that he held so carefully, put his hands
to his head, and cried,

“Good heavens, I must be mad, I am dangerously mad. I forgot all about
your offer!”

Jean looked at him pityingly. “So you forgot!” he said.

“But I am going back,” said M. Loigny, sitting up straight.

“No, I will go myself. Go back to your flowers, Uncle.”

And he went on his way to Le Maupas.

The old man followed him with his eye as far as the turn in the road.
Then he wiped his face, made a sign to the coachman to continue, and
for the first time went home to Rose Villa without any feeling of
pleasure.

Jean discovered Madame Guibert in the garden at Le Maupas. She smiled
when she saw him, sweetly and shyly. And he felt his heart lighten.

“Good afternoon, Jean. Your uncle has just been to see me. Did you know
it?”

“Yes, Madame, he came with a message that he forgot to give you. For
him that is nothing.”

“Oh, don’t be hard on him!”

And with a timid grace she took the young man’s hand in hers.

“Be easy in your mind. I am acquainted with the language of flowers!”

They sat down by the stone table under the trees. Jean kissed her hand.
They understood each other already.

“So you know that I love her?” asked Jean with emotion. Then in a
firmer voice he added:

“How could I help loving her, Madame?”

“She is worthy of it,” answered Paule’s mother, who was thinking of the
new future.

“I think I have always loved her. Only I did not know my mind. When one
is too young, one cannot clearly distinguish the plan of one’s life.
And I shall love her for ever.”

“Yes,” she answered gravely. “Before binding oneself with eternal vows
one must be sure of oneself. And I have confidence in you.”

“I see Marcel’s courage and his pride once more in Paule,” said Jean.
“I shall bless my fate if it has reserved her affection for me.”

“It is God whom you must bless, Jean. Our strength comes from Him only.
Yes, Paule is a darling child. Although I am her mother, I may say
that with pride. I shall give her to you joyfully. Have I not always
considered you as my son? And were you not like a brother to Marcel?”

“Oh, Madame Guibert, your words are so sweet to me. But she? ...”

“Don’t be afraid about her, Jean. She will accept you, I think. But you
must ask her yourself. You have reflected well, have you not, about
your future home? We are not rich, as you know. My son Étienne and I
are willing to give to Paule, if she will be your wife, the rents of
the Maupas estate. It does not bring in much since the vineyards were
separated from it. We cannot do more.”

She was giving up everything and made excuses for doing no more.

“I do not wish it, Madame,” said Jean.

“Let me finish what I have to say. I am anxious to retire. I need very
little to live on. Étienne, being able to do it, gives me an allowance
which, in spite of all I can say, he will not make smaller. You must
think of your future prospects, Jean.”

“Oh, Madame Guibert, what treasure can be compared to Paule’s heart?
But do not think I should ever consent to accept your more than
generous offer. I have already thought about our material future.
Étienne needs help in Tonkin. In all his letters he keeps asking for a
partner to develop the enterprises which are too great for him alone.
Well, I have offered him my help. Out in Algiers I used to interest
myself in everything concerning the soil. I will go to Tonkin. I wrote
to him last month.”

“And you will take your wife out there?”

At this moment Jean’s attention was turned to the steps, where Paule
had just appeared, so he did not see two tears gush from Madame
Guibert’s eyes. When he looked at her she was already prepared for the
new sacrifice which life asked of her, and it was in a firm voice that
she said:

“May God bless your plans! Here is my girl, Jean. She has known
loneliness and sorrow too long. She needs happiness. How happy she will
be with your love! She will feel her youth, which she had forgotten.
Jean, you may tell her that you love her.”

Then she added in lower tones--for Paule was coming nearer--and he did
not hear her words:

“I give you my last, my dearest child.”

Tall and erect, Paule came across the courtyard and joined them under
the shadow of the chestnuts. Her black dress made her look a little
formal as she greeted the young man. He had risen and gone to meet her.
A slight flush heightened her color, while her dark eyes lighted up.
She kissed her mother:

“I have just come from the farm. We shall have the butter and eggs
to-morrow.”

Madame Guibert gazed at them both with motherly eyes. She rose from the
basket-chair where she had been sitting.

“I am going in to see about dinner. You will excuse me, Jean. How
lovely it is this evening. You have not been out all day, Paule. You
should have a walk together before the sun sets. Go as far as the
Montcharvin wood and come back. Come back soon, my children!”

She could not resist calling them her children. She watched them go
down the chestnut avenue side by side with rapid steps.

“How tall she is!” she said to herself. “He is only half a head taller
than she. And he is very tall. A fine couple!”

They disappeared behind the trees. Slowly and with a heavy heart the
old lady went in to her house, and as she prepared herself for this
last sacrifice she repeated to herself:

“My darling little Paule, and I have lost her! May you be happy. You
have deserved it for your dear care of me. Be happy--it is all I ask of
God.”

Above the Vimines road, a path cut off by a screen of poplars from
Forezan’s steep slopes skirts the fields and leads to Montcharvin farm.
Paule and Jean followed it, the girl walking in front.

“Let us go as far as the ash-wood,” she said. “We shall be able to see
the sunset reflected on the mountains through the trees.”

He stopped. “No, let us stay here, will you not?” And he pointed to the
old felled tree-trunk which served as a bench. She had never sat there
since her last walk with Marcel. Thinking of this, she hesitated. She
had no idea what Jean had to say to her. Little accustomed to thinking
of her own affairs and resigned to her destiny as a penniless girl, she
never gave love or marriage a thought. She believed she had stifled
forever the feelings which had once caused her so much suffering, and
kept jealous watch over the heart for which no one asked. She consented
to sit down. For a moment they were silent, side by side.

The sun had disappeared behind the nearby mountains. Round them they
were conscious of the peace of evening falling over the land, like a
holy presence. At their feet the ripe cornfields waved gently. Further
away the trees in the wood gathered their leaves together and sought
calm repose. On the horizon the cliffs of Mount Revard, still touched
by the sunlight, shone with bright pinks and violets. The happy omen in
this peace of nature increased Jean’s emotion. He looked at the girl
beside him and was happy at the thought of what he was about to say to
her.

She remembered with painful clearness the words which Marcel had spoken
to her on this same tree-trunk on the evening before he left for Africa.

“Paule,” she could hear in the voice that was for ever hushed, “do
not be anxious, you will be happy some day.” Since Jean’s return she
accepted her life bravely and without bitterness. She felt a kind of
stoical happiness which satisfied her after so many blows. Was that the
happiness Marcel had meant? In this peaceful hour, the vague longing
for joy of another kind rose up in her. Still, she did not know that
the time had come.

Jean made up his mind to speak.

“I have been speaking to your mother, Paule, of my plans for the
future,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Your leave is up already? You are going away again soon?”

“I am not going back to the regiment.”

In her surprise she waited for his explanation.

“I am going to resign.”

“You, Jean! Oh, that is a mistake. You are not thirty yet, you have the
Legion of Honor and you are giving up your career! What would Marcel
have thought?”

“Marcel would have agreed with me--because I shall serve France in
another way, which will not be less useful. From being a soldier I
shall become a colonist. I have written to your brother Étienne, who
finds his work at Tonkin too much for him. I am going to join him.”

“Oh,” she said. “How glad they will be out there! They know what good
friends you and Marcel were. You will tell them about him as you have
told us. You will see my nephew and my niece. You will know them before
I do.”

The shadows were falling over the plain and began to climb the mountain
slopes. Over Lake Bourget far away, hung a violet haze, mingling itself
by degrees in the pink and gold of the sky. Evening was enveloping
still nature like a blessing.

Jean rose and stood before the girl.

“Your brothers would be much happier if they knew my other plan.” And
lowering his eyes to the ground, he added more gently:

“It is a plan infinitely dear to me. Your mother knows what it is.”

He looked at her and saw with surprise that she suspected nothing. He
admired this forgetfulness of self, and gravely, with deep tenderness,
brought out the decisive words at last:

“Paule, I love you. Will you be my wife and go out there with me?”

She rose in her turn, unable to speak and deathly pale. Her heaving
bosom showed the tumult of her heart.

He continued: “I love you, Paule. Did you not know it? Did you not
guess it? When I came back from Algiers I found you so brave--and so
beautiful. Oh, don’t say no! During the crossing of the Sahara, I
remember, Marcel often told me, when we were talking about Savoy, that
you were your mother’s comfort. Whenever I was looking for something to
stir up my energy, some picture to cheer me and arouse my courage, I
thought of you. I know I have always loved you, since the time we were
children, when I laughed at your long black hair. My happiness lies in
your hands, Paule. Will you not give it to me?”

She made no reply. She was so pale that it seemed as if the blood
had left her veins. He took her hand, which she did not withdraw. He
waited, confident and calm, his heart swelling with hope.

She gazed at the peaceful countryside unseeingly. The summits of Mount
Revard ceased to reflect the sunset glow. All nature was wrapped in
the shadow which precedes sleep.

Was not this the happiness that Marcel had predicted for her, on this
very spot, during a similar sunset?

As she continued silent, Jean was racked with intolerable anguish. In
an altered voice he repeated for the third time.

“Paule, I love you. Why do you not speak? Answer me, I beg you.”

Gently the girl released her hand.

“No, no, I cannot,” she said.

Sobs choked her voice, and she fled towards the house.

Then he felt the night fall even upon his heart. He hated the life he
had once adored and envied Marcel dead on the African sands, Marcel
wrapped in infinite peace.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                            MADAME GUIBERT


On the veranda Madame Guibert was waiting for the return of “her
children.” Her arms were crossed on the iron balustrade; hidden in one
of her hands she held a rosary, the beads of which she told while her
lips murmured the _Ave Maria_. A peace as deep as that which had
fallen over the land now reigned over her tear-stained face.

She saw Paule come back sobbing distractedly and tried in vain to stop
her.

“Paule, what is the matter? Tell me,” she called. But the girl passed
her without a word and fled to her room.

Madame Guibert turned to follow her. Then she changed her mind, threw
a shawl round her shoulders, and descended the steps. With trembling
feet, summoning all her strength, she went up the avenue and posted
herself near the open gate which looked on to the road.

“He cannot have passed yet,” she thought. “Paule came back so quickly.”

By the light of the setting sun she scanned the deserted road. All
round her she heard nothing but the never-ceasing, strident sound of
the crickets and the occasional flutter of a heavy chestnut-leaf blown
down by the wind. After a few minutes of suspense, she saw the young
man’s shadow on the path which skirts the Montcharvin meadows. He
walked along with his head bowed, and his body stooping listlessly. As
he came nearer she read easily the expression of sadness in his face.
So absorbed was he in his sorrow that he did not notice her standing to
his right beside the stone column. As he passed her, she called to him:

“Jean!”

Surprised to hear his own name he turned round and saw the old lady
smiling sweetly at him. He took off his hat and came up to her.

“I am so unhappy,” he said simply, as if he were telling his troubles
to his own mother. Madame Guibert held out her hand to him.

“Jean, give me your arm. Let us go in, night is coming on and it is
getting cold.”

He gave her his arm, answering in dull accents: “Madame Guibert, you
know that I must not come in any more. But I will take you back as far
as the door.”

The golden splashes of twilight sought to blend with the thick trunks
of the chestnuts. Daylight was fighting obstinately with darkness.
Slowly and silently the pair walked over the gravel of the avenue. At
the foot of the steps, as he was going to bid her good-bye she said:

“Come in with me. I want to talk to you. Paule is not in the
drawing-room.”

He tried to resist, then gave way indifferently and followed Madame
Guibert. He was like a condemned man, who does not believe in the
chaplain’s consolations and yet listens to him.

When he had shut the door she turned to him and taking his two hands
looked at him steadily with her clear eyes.

“She has refused to be your wife?”

“She ran away in tears.”

“Jean, my dear Jean, you did not understand.”

Her affectionate words soothed his pain, but also had the effect of
softening his resolution, and he was ready to burst into tears.

“I am sure she does not love me,” he said. “I love her _so_ much.”

She let go his hands and leaned against the table, seeming to collect
her thoughts. What she was making up her mind to say was so serious.
Could she answer for her daughter’s heart? Was she indeed sure that she
herself quite understood? She looked at the young man whom she wished
to have for her son, and remembered how loyal and brave he had been in
the past. Above all she thought of Paule’s loving nature and her life
in the days to come. Reassured, she smiled at Jean and spoke at last.

“You are quite wrong, Jean. Paule loves you.”

He shook his head. “Oh, no, Madame, do not trouble yourself to find
explanations. Let me go away.”

“Do you think mothers can no longer guess their daughter’s secrets?”

She paused and then spoke out her thoughts.

“Paule loves you. Did you not understand that she was sacrificing
herself for me?”

“For you?” he repeated. “How so?”

He looked attentively at Madame Guibert. His youth rebelled at the
thought of defeat and already he was full of a new hope. Still she was
not surprised that he had not guessed her meaning. She answered almost
apologetically:

“Did you not tell her that you were leaving for Tonkin?”

“Yes, I did.”

“She did not want to go away from me, Jean. And that is why she left
you in tears. But she loves you. Did not her tears tell you that?”

At last his own selfishness was clear to him, and he stood stupidly
before the woman whose existence he had forgotten. He had been
preparing to leave her in loneliness and yet a few minutes ago she had
said nothing when he had asked her for the gift of her last child.

Madame Guibert repeated, as he maintained his silence: “She did not
wish to leave me all alone.” And with a faint smile she added, “Does
that surprise you, Jean?”

He was still silent, trying to master the feeling that was overwhelming
him. The old lady went on in her gentle, resolute voice:

“She was wrong, Jean. She loved me before she loved you. She loves
you best to-day and does not yet know it. She has been my joy and my
strength. You will see later what her devotion can be. She has devoted
herself to me to the verge of sacrificing herself. But I do not wish
it. God does not wish it.”

She saw that the young man was almost in tears and she took his hand
again.

“She is looking back, and in life we must look forward. Fathers and
mothers must live for their children, not the other way. It is the
natural law. It is the divine will. Do not mourn, Jean. She will be
your wife. I am going to send her to you. But you must promise me you
will cherish and protect her always and make her happy. My little Paule
deserves it so much.”

Jean could not keep back his tears any longer. And these were sacred
tears, stirred at the sight of such a miracle of abnegation. His deep
and respectful admiration embraced both mother and daughter, so worthy
of one another in their forgetfulness of their own happiness. And he
himself, blinded by his love, had not guessed that this love, cruel as
the gods of old, demanded a great sacrifice, an offering of atonement
in the sorrow of the noblest of hearts!

With an impulsive movement he bent over the hand which he held in his
and placed his lips on it.

“I should like to kneel to you,” he murmured. “May you be blessed above
all women!”

“Oh, what are you saying, Jean?”

He continued: “But I cannot accept your sacrifice. We will stay in
France near you. Paule shall never leave you.”

Madame Guibert had already left him. She went to the end of the
drawing-room, opened a door, and turning round on the threshold as she
went out said, “Wait here for me.”

She crossed her own room and entered her daughter’s noiselessly.
Through the open window the dying light of day came in, with the
perfume of the garden, and was reflected with the trees in the mirror.
In the afterglow, she saw Paule, sitting huddled up at the foot of her
bed, crying her heart out for her lost happiness. She had lost it of
her own free will, and not through weakness; but could she not see it
now from afar, like the promised land which she should never enter?
She plunged herself into the flood of that love which none had known
or could ever know, that joyous love of old which she had thought
suppressed for ever and which she now felt welling forth again to her
sorrow--plunged herself so deep that she seemed almost to taste the
savor of death upon her lips. She was awakened from her misery by her
mother’s kiss upon her hair.

“Paule,” said Madame Guibert, “why are you crying? You must be brave in
your happiness, as you have been in your trials.”

The girl had already risen and under cover of the growing darkness,
which partly hid the signs of her sorrow, she began at once to defend
herself.

“You don’t know what happened, Mother. I do not love him. Only ... his
offer was so unexpected, so strange, that I was a little startled. It
is the first time, Mother, you know.... But I don’t love him, I assure
you.... I cannot do more than I have done.”

Her mother was looking at her with infinite love, as if she were
measuring the extent of this devotion which would not confess itself
and persisted in denial, even to despair.

“Come with me, Paule,” she said at last. “Jean has not told you
everything--Or you left too soon. He did not have time to tell you,
dear, that when you go I am going with you.”

As flowers after a heavy shower sparkle in the sunlight which changes
their rain-drops to precious stones, so now this tearful face lighted
up. Paule threw her arms round her mother’s neck. If Madame Guibert
had any doubts about Paule’s secret, this quick change would have
enlightened her.

“Mother, is that true? How happy we shall be out there! ... I love you.”

Madame Guibert smiled, fully aware that these three immortal words were
not meant for her.

“I knew it well,” she murmured softly, fondling her daughter’s cheek
as she used to do when she was but a tiny child. Moved to tears she
was thinking of the blossoming of this happiness to which, by a
providential chance, she had been allowed to contribute, and under her
breath she thanked God, who had answered her prayer.

Shyly and without looking at her mother, Paule asked: “Has he gone?”

“He is here.”

The girl blushed, but the darkness hid her. The golden lights were
already fading from the mirror.

“Let us go and find him,” said Madame Guibert.

She lead Paule by the hand into the drawing-room.

“Jean,” she said, “here is your wife!”

She joined their hands. But they did not look at each other yet. A
similar emotion filled their hearts. Jean was the first to raise his
eyes. The tears Paule had shed, if they lessened the beauty of her
features, took away the pride of her expression and in its place
brought a humbler, more touching look. He loved her all the more for
her womanly weakness.

“I may be certain of my happiness?” were his first words.

With a sigh she answered, “Oh, yes....”

“Paule, I love you,” he said.

She repeated after him in a voice that was scarcely audible: “I love
you, Jean.”

She looked at him in her turn and they smiled at each other. But
immediately her eyes went to her mother, and, the joy of her heart
confirmed, she said:

“Mother is going to Tonkin with us. We will all be together out there
except my sister Marguerite, the nun.”

Now Jean understood the last argument Madame Guibert had used to test
her daughter’s heart. And although he had doubts about this journey
and instinctively suspected the generous falsehood, he pretended to
rejoice with the two women.

“My children, my dear children,” Madame Guibert cried. “God has given
us great happiness. May His blessing be upon you, upon your new home,
upon your family! Jean, kiss your bride.”

The young man’s lips touched a cheek that was still wet. Thus their
first kiss was mingled with sadness, as if to symbolize their union for
life, in sorrow and in joy.

Madame Guibert had gone to the end of the drawing-room, and was looking
at Marcel’s photograph; but at this late hour it was more in memory
than in the portrait that she could see her son’s features. Jean and
Paule came up to her.

“How happy Marcel would be,” said the young man. “I think now he knew
my heart before I did myself.”

And the girl was thinking of her brother’s words: “Don’t be anxious,
you will be happy some day.” Could he, who bore the fatal sign upon his
brow and walked towards death with a sure step, have read the future
then, with eyes that saw into another world? Was it his detachment from
this life that enabled him to understand the affinity of souls and the
secret of destinies? Paule’s sisterly devotion was glad to have Marcel
associated with her own love.

The glowing struggle of the daylight with the dusk was over. Day was
dead.

“I must go,” murmured Jean to his fiancée. And immediately she felt
sad. Already all her thoughts were with her future husband and this
first separation was a cause of grief.

“It is very late,” Madame Guibert broke in. “Stay with us, Jean. You
must dine with us--you are not hard to please. Afterwards you can go
back to Rose Villa.”

He hesitated a minute.

“I cannot,” he said. “My uncle would be anxious. I was rude to him just
now on the road and I don’t wish to cause him fresh annoyance.”

He told Paule of M. Loigny’s unaccomplished official mission.

“Come back with him to-morrow for luncheon, then,” continued Madame
Guibert. “Tell him that the garden will play its part in the fête. We
shall have our loveliest flowers on the table. They will entertain
him. Then we will all go and celebrate your engagement at the village
church.”

As Jean left Le Maupas he found darkness in the oakwood. Joyfully and
in no haste he descended the wooded hillside, as though it were the
plain straight path of his well-ordered life in the days to come; the
same hillside that Marcel had once mounted running, with the fire of
love in his heart and the savor of danger upon his dry lips.

That night Paule was late in getting to sleep. She welcomed love
with a steadfast heart, and with a serious feeling that made her
resolution the firmer, not the weaker. She had climbed the hill of her
youth, fighting difficulties, both physical and moral, as the hardy
mountain-sheep struggle upward through the bushes which tear their
fleeces on the way. Now it seemed to her that she was walking over a
plain and that her bare feet were treading the soft grass. The sky
before her was full of light. And what did it matter to her if she
still had to climb? Would she not hereafter have a stronger arm to lean
upon? And did she not feel in herself a new courage?

But Paule had been asleep a long time when her mother was still
watching and praying.

“My God,” the poor woman murmured, “for the first time in my life I
have told a lie. Forgive me. These two children had to be brought
together. They were made for each other. Should not their happiness
go before mine? I am too old to follow them. I cannot leave my dead.
The earth is calling to me and Thou will soon summon me. Here I will
await the hour that Thou hast fixed. But grant me strength, Oh my God,
to bear this last separation calmly. I had grown accustomed to Paule’s
care and Thou remindest me, in taking away my only earthly joy, that
we cannot attach ourselves for ever to this world’s goods. In leaving
me she will take away the heart which Thou hast filled, before breaking
it. I offer Thee my sorrows beforehand, so that Thou mayst shower
the most abundant blessings on my sons, including Jean, and on my
daughters, on the living and the dead.”

She prayed a long time. At last she found peace in resignation, and her
tardy slumbers were tranquil.




                              CHAPTER IX

                       THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSES


On the road to Rose Villa Jean breathed in the air of the loveliest of
summer nights and tasted that joy which life gives when love comes to
make it straight and whole, not to disturb and torture.

Jean reached his uncle’s house before he knew where he was.

“Already!” he cried. And he smiled as he noticed that all the windows
of the little house were lighted up. “Is he having a party? That would
be an unusual sight.”

He opened the gate and went up the little rose-bordered path which led
in a straight line to the front door. Mechanically he stretched out his
hand, as he often did, towards the slim bushes and in the darkness his
fingers tried to gather a flower at haphazard; but they found only the
leaves and the thorns.

“Some thief,” he thought, “has climbed the fence and stolen my uncle’s
treasures! What a blow for the poor man!”

The door was still ajar. Jean pushed it open. It seemed as if he were
walking in a field of roses. The invisible garden, under shadow of
night, had apparently invaded the hall. Flowers lay in heaps, and the
electric light of the ante-room revealed, on a green background of
leaves, variegated patches of color--here in sharp contrast, there
in insensible gradations of hue. Red roses, crimson red, poppy-red,
carmine, nasturtium, flame-colored, copper, red of the dawn; white
roses, dead-white, pure white, creamy white; roses of tender pink,
peach-colored, bright pink; roses of pale yellow, straw-colored,
canary-colored, nankin yellow, lemon yellow, sulphur, orange; all
mingled their scents together.

Jean went forward stupefied. The doors of the dining-room and
drawing-room, which communicated with each other and could be thrown
into a single room, stood wide open and their thresholds strewn with
flowering branches revealed the onward progress of the invading
hordes. But after three or four steps, the young man stopped short.
A voice penetrated distinctly to his ears. It was giving forth, with
the monotonous regularity of a chamberlain, announcing the guests,
the names of women, and at every name it sounded as if a branch were
falling on the ground or as if silken stuffs were rustling.

“Madame Laurette de Messimy! Madame Jean Sisley! The Countess of
Panisse! The Duchess of Edinburgh! The Duchess of Auerstädt! The
Marquise de Vivens! Madame Hippolyte Jamain! Madame de Watteville!
Mademoiselle Anne-Marie Cote! ...”

With a catch at his heart Jean thought, “Uncle has gone mad while I was
away!”

The quiet voice seemed now to be chanting some profane litany.

“Beauty of Europe! Inconstant Beauty! Star of Lyons! Gloire de Dijon!
Firefly! Grace Darling! Snowball! Golden Dream! Miniature! Surprise!
Pearl of the Gardens! Streaky Pearl! Perfection of Pleasure! ...”

The young man’s face brightened with a smile; but he stood where he was.

“Fanchette, let us go into the drawing-room,” said the voice. “There
are still some more.”

After a pause the names began again. But the women’s names no longer
reached Jean’s ears so sharp and clear; they were accompanied by short
descriptions of toilettes, rather like the accounts in fashion papers,
and then by flattering appreciations addressed indiscriminately to
princesses, great ladies, or beauties of the people.

“The Duchess of Morny, in pale pink, backed with silver! Viscountess
Folkestone, in bright pink with salmon lights! Mademoiselle Thérèse
Levet, in cherry pink! Mademoiselle Eugénie Verdier, in bright pink
with white lights, and Mademoiselle Marie Perrin, in beautiful pale
silvery pink!”

After this gracious group of bright robed young women, the speaker’s
enthusiasm waxed warmer.

“Mademoiselle Adelina Viviand-Morel, your hue is indefinable. Your
apricot, shading to canary, turns to straw yellow streaked with
flesh colour! Anne-Marie de Montravel, you are certainly tiny, but
your simple toilette is of the purest white. Mademoiselle Augustine
Guinoiseau, your whiteness, satiny and faintly pink fascinates me. You
are tall and well made, the flower of all France! Innocence Pirola, I
love your slim grace and your rosy tint. Madame Ernest Calvat, there
is a sweet fullness about you and your dress is a charming vivid China
pink. Yet I prefer that tender rose hue, suffused with white, of the
Baroness Rothschild, tall and very lovely, but without scent.”

Jean stifled a laugh when, with a brusque change of tone, the voice
commanded:

“Now we must make haste, Fanchette. My nephew will be back soon.”

“And what about dinner?” asked the maid. “What time will you have it
to-night? Or are you doing to dine on scents?”

M. Loigny’s voice, imperious and angry, was heard through the room.

“I tell you, girl, that I despise your dinner! Let us get on!”

The interrupted litany began again calmly.

“Madame Olga Marix, you are of medium height and the white of your robe
is almost the color of living flesh. Countess of Murinais, I love you
above all for your delicate pallor, for your foam-like, fragile beauty.
Your grace is not of the lasting kind. You have not the charming
precocity of Madame Sancy de Parabère, nor her amiable opulence, nor
the lovely brightness of her vivid pink, but you are a type of discreet
elegance and distinction.”

Now at last Jean could contain himself no longer, and at the risk of
breaking the spell he bent forward to look at the favorite. He saw M.
Loigny with pruning shears in one hand, while in the other hand he
lifted the perfect flower, the white rose which he loved and praised
the most. Kneeling on the floor, Fanchette was grouping the countless
stalks which her master threw to her after gazing at them fondly,
classing them by their families, and calling them by their names. The
armchairs, the table, the carpet, all the country drawing-room was
hidden under the roses. It seemed as though they had fallen from the
ceiling in a scented rain, an odorous avalanche. And through the open
bay window the young man saw in the dining-room huge bouquets standing
in a row, with dashes of red-purple in them that looked like wounds.
These strangely decorated rooms were the death-chamber of the revived
garden.

“There are only three or four princesses left,” said the rose-lover,
somewhat regretfully, to calm his angry servant. And quickly he went
over them.

“Princess Beatrice, tall and nonchalant, in bright pink; Princess
Marie, whose pink is like the cheek of a shy maiden; Princess Louise,
who may be compared to some fresh face with its brilliant coloring
toned down by a clumsy powderpuff.”

“Why has he ruined his garden?” Jean uneasily asked himself.

Through the windows he looked out into the night, and fancied he could
hear in the wind which idly stirred the branches, the plaint of the
mutilated rose-bushes.

At last M. Loigny noticed his nephew and his face assumed at once an
expression of contrition and timidity.

“Here is every one of my roses,” was all that he said.

The young man was thinking: “He is not even interested in my
engagement.” But happiness made him tolerant and he even wished to
flatter his uncle’s innocent whim.

“Why did you gather them this evening?” he asked.

The agitated old man pursued the line of his own thoughts.

“Not one was spared, and my whole garden is there. The finest have
women’s names, but the Chinese gardeners show the most poetical
imaginations in naming the many colored beauties of the earth.”

“I heard you a few moments ago,” went on Jean pleasantly, “and I
supposed you were talking to a crowd of charming shadows.”

“About a hundred and fifty,” said his uncle.

“It is a goodly number.”

“What is it compared with the incessantly increasing number of the
various kinds of roses? There are several thousands of them. And one
forgets all those that our grandfathers cultivated, of which one can
find only in old books and among some rare specimens in old gardens.
In our day too, Jean, new roses make their appearance every year from
the hands of their clever growers. Look on the ground and you will see
represented by choice specimens the roses of Bengal and China, the Miss
Lawrence varieties, the many-flowered roses, whose trails are suited
to borders and baskets, the roses of Provence, the moss-rose, the tea
rose, the noisette, in whose delicate coloring the note of yellow is
predominant. Cold-hating plants these Tea and Noisette roses! We have
to protect them against the severities of winter, but they reward us
for our trouble by flowering abundantly.”

Once started on his hobby, like a dog running round a cornfield,
he rushed about, sniffing the air, gesticulating and heedlessly
threatening all the knick-knacks of the drawing-room with sudden ruin.
All at once he walked up to a little desk, opened a drawer and drew out
a volume, which he brandished in the air as he came back toward his
nephew.

“Lecoq’s ‘Cultivation of Vegetables,’” he murmured. “A weighty work,
admirable, inimitable!”

He turned over the pages, and smiling happily began to read this
passage in a loud voice:

“Whatever the size of a bed, however small may be the corner of
ground at an amateur’s disposal, whatever useful knowledge he may
gain, whatever curious experiments he may make, and whatever joy he
may attain when by artificial cultivation he succeeds in enriching
his garden, his friends, even his country, with some new creation
which owes its existence to his care and intelligence.” He looked at
his nephew over his book, and then finished the quotation: “Everyone
may act in his own sphere, in his own corner, may be silent if he is
not successful (which is rare), and may justly boast if something
remarkable comes to crown his efforts.”

As if he had equalled Napoleon or Cæsar in the gratification of his
ambition, M. Loigny murmured sadly as he closed the learned work:

“Yes, I have dreamed of emulating the rose-grower Gonod or Louis Scipio
Cochet. I, too, have created a rose! She is lying there with all the
rest. I wanted to call her the ‘Souvenir of Loigny the Rosarist’ so
that by means of her sweet scent and delicate coloring my name might
be transmitted through the ages to all garden-lovers. I, even I, have
aspired to glory.”

“That is splendid. Show her to me,” said Jean. “Then let us have
dinner, for I am dying of hunger.”

“Now that is what I call sense,” muttered Fanchette.

The hands of the clock stood at nine.

“Go to your stove, my girl,” the old man ordered with dignity. He was
already on all fours on the floor, looking for his masterpiece in the
heap of roses. Without getting up he handed a magnificent flower to his
nephew.

“She will not bear my name--but yours. This very evening I have
christened her Paule Berlier.”

“She is beautiful,” said Jean. But he was thinking of his fiancée.
Then he added: “I thank you, Uncle, for your poetic homage.”

The old man was still on his knees. He stretched out his two hands with
an expansive gesture and softly repeated, “Here are all my roses!”

“But why this massacre?” Jean asked for the second time. “I am sure you
must have decapitated all your plants.”

“All, Jean, without exception.”

“Why this slaughter? Won’t you tell me?”

M. Loigny was contemplating the mass of cut flowers with the radiant
smile of a Christian virgin led to martyrdom. He got up with difficulty
and answered:

“Here are all my roses. They are for you.”

“For _me_?” asked Jean, surprised.

“For you, so that you may give them to your fiancée.”

“You have despoiled your garden for my fiancée? Oh, how kind you are!”
said Jean. As he embraced his uncle, he noticed that the old man’s eyes
were full of tears.

“But why? They are your flowers. You should not have sacrificed them
for me.”

With an affection that Jean had never known in him, M. Loigny put his
hand on the young man’s shoulder and said gently to him:

“Yes, Jean, it was necessary. I am not crying for my roses, but for
myself. They are not, they should never have been anything but a
diversion instead of occupying all my time. Can you forgive me, Jean?”

“Forgive you?”

“Yes, I had positively forgotten life. I was afraid of its sorrows and
troubles, and I took refuge in my garden. Many people commit the same
cowardice, in another way. They are wrong, like me. Just now on the
road, at the sight of your astonished face, I suddenly understood the
harm I had done. For the sake of a rose, for a wicked autumn-flowering
China rose, dark red turning to purple, I had lost sight of your
happiness, your love, and my own duty. But all my flowers are there.
When I came in I fell upon my rose bushes with this weapon.” He still
had the pruning shears in his left hand, instrument of his atoning
sacrifice.

Jean tried to interpose.

“But you loved flowers....”

“No, no,” said the old man. “Don’t attempt to make excuses for me. Your
father and mother are dead, Jean. It was my business to replace them
as well as I could. Everyone has his obligations. If it is not towards
his family, it is towards his neighbor. While I was watering my plants,
you were growing up in my house, and I never even noticed it I am only
too happy to give you these roses for her whom you have chosen. My life
is changed from now on. I have thought more in a few hours than during
the last twenty years. In the future, Jean, count on me. I want to
help your young household. I have spent my little fortune vainly on my
rose-bushes instead of thinking of your welfare.”

“We won’t think about that,” broke in the young man, now overwhelmed
with emotion.

“On the contrary, we will think about it,” said his uncle. “Late in
the day I am going to be of some use. The autumn roses are often the
finest.”

Jean took him in his arms.

“I love you, my dear uncle.”

“To-morrow you will take those bouquets to Le Maupas.”

“We will divide them in two lots, if you agree,” said Jean. “We will
put one on my parents’ grave and we will offer the other to Paule.”

“Yes,” agreed the old man, and repeated without knowing it the very
words of the younger when he came back from Africa. “We must honor the
dead but have faith in life.”

Thus the rose-lover found peace of mind in the ruin of his garden.




                               CHAPTER X

                          NIOBE’S LAST CHILD


On a dark morning in December a few women slipped like shadows through
the snow which deadened their footsteps, to Saint-Real and Metropole
Streets, which lead to the Cathedral at Chambéry. As one entered the
church the half-open door showed the flickering rays of the lamp
running along the dark arches. Toward this trembling lamp they hurried,
in spite of the cold and the darkness, as though they had come to beg
light and warmth from it. Humble housewives, shop-girls, workwomen,
servants, they rose early before their work and hastened to the first
Mass as though to some secret meeting-place. They came one by one,
sometimes recognizing one another in the porch. Already filled with
respect for the sanctity of the place, they spoke in low voices. They
all joined together in a group constantly growing more and more compact
in one of the side chapels, where two candles, which a choir boy was
lighting, showed the place of the holy sacrifice. Walking slowly and
carefully on account of the frost on the pavement, Madame Guibert
allowed herself to be outdistanced by some of the more active women.
Nevertheless she was one of the first to enter. She had never forgotten
her old habit, always to be ahead of time. She knelt a little to the
side and isolated herself in prayer. She had great need of divine help,
and begged for it with her whole soul. That very day she was to know
the bitterness of being alone. The moment had come for Niobe to give
up her youngest child, the one whom she held in her arms and which
till now the gods had spared to her. Paule and her husband would leave
Chambéry at three o’clock on their journey to Tonkin to rejoin their
brothers on the island of Kébao.

The marriage had been celebrated at Cognin in the first days of
September. Then the young couple had gone to seek solitude among
unknown faces in that other part of Savoy, whose matchless beauty is a
miracle of softness, sweetness, and grace--the green plain of Chablais,
fringed by the blue waters of Lake Leman and bounded by mountains with
their lazy curves wooded to the summit, and further off outlined by
rugged peaks which raise their barren whiteness to the blue of the sky
and in the evening seem like flagstaffs that reflect on their banners
the light of the setting sun. Autumn above all gives this enchanted
country its fullest power to stir the emotions. With its blending,
dying harmonies it tempers the excessive gaiety which summer lavishes
on it; it changes the ringing laughter of water and meadow, plain, and
mountain, to that smile of pleasure which knows itself short-lived and
yet wishes to rejoice.

Paule and Jean witnessed this autumnal magic. They saw the trees in the
woods adorn themselves with a thousand splendid fleeting tints, and the
vines which slope down to the shore dress themselves in gold. Their
hearts learned the better to appreciate the lesson, already familiar
to them, of the insecurity of love when it makes itself its sole end,
and, taking the time of a kiss for the time of day, fails to build
upon the only sure foundation--a life lived in sympathetic accord and
consecrated to the continuity of the race.

They came back to Le Maupas when the vines had been gathered and the
meadows harvested, when the brilliance of the sun, the softness of
the air, and the grace of the earth increased in proportion to the
barrenness round about and strove to detach man from self-centred
thoughts. Paule kept very near her mother, as if to forget the threat
of the future. And the future cast its shadow upon the present hour
which saw mother and daughter reunited. Madame Guibert had been obliged
to tell Paule of her wish to stay in Savoy. Jean then generously
offered to give up his plans. Monsieur Loigny, his nature decidedly
changed, wanted to help his nephew, and at the price of numerous
headaches (for he had lost the habit of office work) tried to take
stock of the little fortune which he had looked after so badly between
two grafts of a rose-bush. He perceived too late that the garden is a
bad speculation. Jean’s character and capabilities, Paule’s energy, the
financial position of both families, all made them look to the Colonies
for the establishment of their new home. Furthermore Étienne multiplied
his appeals to them. He told of the prosperity of his business and
was already prepared to guarantee their ultimate success. He begged
his sister to bring their mother with her, that in her happy old age
she might receive the homage of their filial devotion. Gently but
obstinately Madame Guibert had refused.

“I am too old,” she said to Jean and Paule when they insisted. “How
should I, who have never gone further than from Cognin to Chambéry and
from Chambéry to Cognin, bear such a long journey? I should only be in
the way. You will all come home to me in your turn. You will tell me
about my grandchildren whom I do not know and whom I love, as I loved
my own children before they were born.”

She smiled, so that no one might think of noticing her tears. But she
reflected in her heart: “I feel that God is calling me. Now, now at
last, my task is finished. I am nearer the dead than the living. When
I am alone I will visit my husband more often and my little Thérèse,
who are waiting for me in the cemetery. The memory of Marcel, who rests
in Africa, will fill my heart. I will make only one journey more, and
that will be to find my own again. Those left on earth have no more
need of me. From afar I shall pray for them here, and then from above.
I can do no more....”

Paule set her wits to work to give her mother daily proof of her love.
For so many years she had eaten the bread of sorrow with her. The young
wife was inclined to blame herself for her married joy on the eve of
this separation, and Madame Guibert had to encourage her to be happy.

“I know what you are thinking about,” said Jean when he saw his wife’s
sadness.

“I love you,” she replied. “I love you more than anyone in the whole
world, but she ...”

Jean kissed her as he went on: “I am not jealous, Paule, and I
understand your trouble so well....”

He had himself arranged for Madame Guibert’s life after their
departure. He had installed her for the winter, in spite of her
protests, in a little home in the Rue Saint-Real at Chambéry. There
she would be less alone than at Le Maupus and would be in welcome
proximity to the church.

“I do not wish to be a source of expense,” murmured the poor old lady.

But Étienne in Tonkin had quite agreed with his brother-in-law. And
the neighborhood of the Cathedral led to the success of their plan. As
the days went on, however, Paule felt her courage weaken while that of
Madame Guibert increased. The latter was quite transfigured, and on
her forehead with its deep wrinkles, in her clear eyes, on her pale
cheeks, the radiancy of her soul shone forth. In the evening she talked
to her two children about their future and poured into their hearts
her own confidence in God, that confidence which cheerfully leaves to
Providence the outcome of one’s own firmness, courage, and virtue.

This teaching, illustrated by her own noble example, they never forgot.
Clinging to one another like travelers threatened by a storm, all
three tasted the brief happiness of being together and at length sadly
reached the morning of their separation. But Jean and Paule were still
sleeping when Madame Guibert drew near to God, to find the supreme
strength she would presently need.

Suffering souls, who seek in prayer forgetfulness and calm, love to
frequent chapels at the hour when day is dying. Under the arches,
where the light falling from the windows loses itself, they have a
vague consciousness of a mysterious and peaceful presence. One may
guess at the state of these stricken beings from the slow murmur of
their lips, still more from their weary, hopeless attitudes as they
kneel on the softest spots they can find for their knees. But the poor
women who go to early Mass have more need of courage than of calm.
Before their labors they seek strength and patience in the presence of
Him who suffered all human sorrows without a murmur. Hardened by daily
work, they do not appreciate a merely comfortable religion, but throw
themselves into the faith as into refreshing water, from which they
emerge with new life and spirit.

The altar bell had announced the beginning of the holy sacrifice. At
one end an aged priest with bent head slowly recited the prayers, to
which a sleepy little clerk made the responses.

Madame Guibert had chosen a dark corner, a little to one side, and was
absorbed in her meditations. Her black dress and the widow’s veil that
she still wore made her hardly distinguishable from the shadows. She
ran over in memory the last days of her life and without difficulty
found in them reason to bless and to thank her God. Had He not granted
her what she had so long prayed for, in her own misery--the happiness
of her daughter? Paule, her little Paule, not only the best beloved
of all her children, but the most loving, and the support of her sad
old age--how often had she called down divine blessings upon her, whom
the family sorrows had most intimately touched. Doubtless in bestowing
them, God would tear her heart. But since this was the necessary price,
how could she have the cowardice to murmur against His beneficent Will
or to hate the loneliness which was coming upon her that night?

“No, no,” she said in her prayer. “I will not pity myself, as we are
so often tempted to do to excuse our weakness. My God, Thou wilt aid
me in my need. I will be firm to-night. They shall not see me cry. I
could not go with them. Thou hast warned me of my failing strength, and
my work is done. My children will carry it on better than I could. I
thank Thee for having in Thy goodness allowed me to see my daughter’s
happiness. I entrust her to Thy protection during this long journey
with her husband who has become my son.” All shaken with emotion
she added: “I entrust to Thee, my God, yet another life, dark and
uncertain, that of a little babe still to come, whom my hands will
never receive in this world. Grant him health, intelligence, a firm
spirit, and submission to Thy holy law. Grant him a long life in order
that he may be able to serve Thee better. May he be strong and brave in
well-doing, may he fear neither laughter nor tears, may he love work,
and may he be to his mother what she has been to me.”

Some time before the happy Paule had told her of her dearest hope,
which was confirmed as time went on. Her marriage was already blest. A
new source of love and devotion had welled up in her.

When Madame Guibert lifted her head which she had hidden in her hands,
she noticed that the priest was leaving the altar and she reproached
herself.

“I have not heard Mass.” But she immediately felt reassured, for in her
prayer she had found the peace she sought.

From here, from there, from chair and bench, one by one the
congregation rose and went to the door. They were going to their daily
work with quiet hearts and bodies prepared. In her turn Madame Guibert
left the church. Outside day was scarcely breaking over the snow on the
roofs and streets--that sad winter’s day which would see her come back
from the station alone.

She turned the key in the lock and on tip-toe crossed the passage full
of trunks to go to the kitchen noiselessly. Old Marie was already
preparing breakfast.

“Monsieur has just gone out to engage the omnibus,” she explained.

“Without any breakfast?” asked Madame Guibert, thoughtful as ever.

“He did not wish any. He just said he would not wait.”

“And Madame?”

“Madame who? Oh yes, Mademoiselle Paule! I cannot get used to calling
her Madame. It’s funny, isn’t it? Mademoiselle is still asleep. There I
go again, the same mistake. When one is old, one is good for nothing.”

“It can’t be helped, my poor Marie, we are both old.”

But both of them, paying little heed to what they were saying,
were thinking of the parting to come. The servant, taking off her
spectacles, passed her rough hand over her eyes. With her shaking
fingers Madame Guibert tried to make Paule’s chocolate for the last
time. She made it the way she knew her girl liked it. Then she listened
at the door, knocked softly, went in, and found Paule in tears.

“Mother, mother! Tell me that I _must_ go. I have not the strength
myself to say it.”

Madame Guibert put the steaming cup on the bedside table, then she laid
her wrinkled hand on her daughter’s forehead.

“Dear little one,” she said, “I wanted to wait on you myself this
morning, and I ordered these rolls that you like so much.” She bent
over her and in a low voice, as she kissed her, murmured: “Be brave,
Paule. It is God’s wish. Your husband’s love assures me that you will
be happy. And do not be alarmed about me.”

But their tears still flowed. Jean came back and saw the two women
locked in each other’s arms. He thought that Paule was trying to
comfort her mother.

“We will come back, Mother,” he said. “We will come back, I swear it.
Next year you will have Étienne and his wife and in two years you will
see us.”

But when Madame Guibert turned to him, he saw with surprise that she
was not crying and that the consolations came from her, not Paule.

“In two years,” she thought, “where shall I be?” But she answered
gravely: “Jean, love your wife dearly. When you are far from me, that
thought will be my strength. God is so good and watches over us. We
shall be more closely united than ever when we are separated. Our
thoughts and our hearts will be one. Distance is nothing when one is
sure of love.”

With a solemnity that came quite naturally to her and affected her
voice quite unconsciously, she went on: “You must love each other.
Don’t make of your love a source of weakness. Gather from it and your
mutual confidence more resolution, more courage in life. Look ahead of
you. When you look behind you, towards our dead and towards me, may it
not be to find discouragement there, but to understand your own youth
better, and all that God expects from it.”

Jean and his wife had taken her hands and were listening to her without
interruption.

“Yes,” she continued, as if she were unfolding the future, “look before
you, towards your work, towards the family that will come after you.
Give your sons and daughters brave souls and make them look ahead
in their turn, with eyes in which your past will have shaped their
outlook.”

They were both weeping, while she remained peaceful and calm.

“My blessing is on you,” she concluded. “On you, my little Paule,
for your loving daughterly goodness to me and your devotion to your
brothers. On you, Jean, for the friendship you have shown to Marcel and
for all the happiness that I see in your eyes, in spite of the tears.”

Her firmness did not break down till the moment of departure. She
cheered her tearful daughter in the name of the little one whom the
young wife carried under her heart. But Paule could not resign herself.
She kept on kissing her, hastened to speak again, and sometimes turned
towards her husband to say to him: “I love you, dear, all the same; you
know that.”

Madame Guibert insisted on going to the station with them. There they
found several friends, who had come to say good-bye. M. Loigny was ill
and had not been able to come out on account of the cold and the damp
roads, but his Fanchette brought for his niece some hothouse flowers.
Some distance away Madame de Marthenay, looking quite thin in spite of
her furs and very pale, was watching a favorable moment to kiss Paule.
The latter noticed her and came up to her. After a second’s hesitation
the two women threw themselves into each other’s arms.

“Still unhappy?” Paule asked gently, reading the sorrow in her old
friend’s face.

“Still. But what of you, Paule?”

They both turned to Madame Guibert. Very quickly Madame Berlier
murmured: “Do you want to do me a great kindness, Alice? Go to see
Mother often, look after her a little, and write to me about her
health.”

“I promise you I will,” said Alice with deep emotion as they parted.
Soon after Madame Guibert was left alone with her daughter and her
son-in-law. As before, her last words at the moment of separation were
a prayer: “May God keep you!” But when the train had carried them out
of sight she touched her forehead and felt that it was icy-cold.

“It was time, my God,” she thought. “I had no more strength left.” She
was forced to sit down in the third class waiting-room. The passengers
who came and went, occupied with their luggage and their tickets, did
not even notice the poor old woman in mourning who sat sobbing there.
She had become a humble weak creature again. But she had had the
strength to hide her suffering from her children.

Alone in the railway carriage with his beloved, Jean pressed her to
his breast. She had quite broken down and her head leaned against the
heart which beat for her only. He said nothing to her, knowing the
uselessness of words. He gently stroked her cheek and from time to
time bent down to kiss the eyes whose tears he could not stop. When
she raised her head a little he comforted her by saying: “We will come
back, Paule.” She shook her head, doubtful of this return, or because
she did not yet wish to be consoled.

“I love you, Jean,” she sighed, and began to weep afresh.

Then he spoke to her of her mother.

“Paule, she is setting us a splendid example of heroism and
self-sacrifice. May we never forget it! And if later on, in many years
to come, we have occasion to imitate her may her memory still be
present with us. Oh, may the child who is coming to us be like her!”

Paule was listening to him more calmly, and he added: “May God protect
both our child and her whom we have left behind with a broken heart!”

“Yes, I will pray,” she said. “It was God who gave my mother the
resignation that she tried to implant in me.”

In her young life, she had known many hours of anguish and mourning;
but she had never known a more painful one than this. She thought she
tasted the bitterness of death, yet in reality her life was stirring to
its inmost depths. Her love was purified, all unknown to her, in that
divine flame of maternal sacrifice of which she was more and more to
appreciate the value.

As the railway passed in front of the oak wood which is neighbor to Le
Maupas, Jean and Paule looked at the familiar landscape through the
window. The tree-branches bore snowflakes for leaves, their whiteness
tinted by the setting sun. On the vine-row hung a lacework of frost.

Here it was, and here alone, that Paule had learned to know life,
death, and love. She thought of the proud, passionate, young girl,
whose boast was the care with which she watched over her mother.

“Kiss me,” she cried to her husband. “I have so much need of love to be
able to go away from here!”

Jean took her in his arms. And the kiss they gave each other spread a
sacred thrill through their veins; for to that union of their body and
soul they added the filial devotion of the past and that mysterious
hope for the future which made their lives so much fuller and gave an
immortal meaning to their love.




                              CHAPTER XI

                                 PEACE


Madame Guibert rose with difficulty from the bench on which she had
seated herself to weep. She saw a few strangers passing hurriedly and
wished to hide her sorrow.

“I cannot stay here any longer,” she thought When she stood up she had
to hold on to the wall and she wondered if she would have the strength
to reach the house.

She felt her age and her weakness hanging like heavy weights on her
shoulders. She remembered the day when she dragged herself through the
endless chestnut avenue at La Chênaie. On the threshold of the station
she thought anxiously of the long road home. But accustomed as she was
to spend nothing on herself she did not dream of hiring one of the cabs
in the Square.

She set out slowly, leaning on the umbrella which served her as a stick
and putting her feet down carefully so as not to slip on the snow.
The hardships of her journey made her forget her sorrow, but when she
stopped a moment she whispered gently the name of Paule--of Paule who
would never, never be her help again. Her mind was following the two
dear ones who were carrying away with them all her happiness.

“They have reached the waterfall at Coux now.... O God!”

As she was crossing the bridge over the muddy waters of the Leysse she
stopped and leaned on the parapet to take breath. At that moment she
heard someone call. “Madame Guibert,” said the voice, “will you allow
me to come with you?” It was Madame de Marthenay, who had watched her
from the station, hesitating between the wish to help her, according to
the promise she had made to Paule, and the fear of breaking in upon her
absorbing sorrow. Seeing her now in distress, she came forward.

Madame Guibert was so tired that she took the arm offered to her. In
her sorrow she hardly spoke during the walk home. Alice, with tactful
delicacy, tried to console her in talking of the joy her children would
have when they saw her again. On the doorstep Paule’s mother thanked
her gratefully.

“But I am going to help you upstairs,” Madame de Marthenay insisted.

“You are very kind. Thank you very much.” And when they were at the
head of the stairs she added: “Come in for a minute. You must rest a
little. I leaned very heavily on your arm along the road.” The poor
weary eyes in their appeal laid bare the tragedy of the desolate home.

“I shall be very glad,” said Alice, moved to deep sympathy as she
followed the old lady into a bedroom, changed by means of a screen into
a little sitting-room by day. Marie the maid, still overwhelmed by
“Mademoiselle’s” departure, brought in a telegram.

“Here is a message,” she said, with a hostile glance at the elegant
Madame de Marthenay.

With difficulty, and shaking all over, Madame Guibert tore open the
envelope. She could never open one of those little blue papers without
trembling for they might have a message of death in them. But her
face cleared immediately. As she read, Alice was looking round her
mechanically at the simple and modest, almost conventional, furniture.
Her eyes fell on the enlarged photograph of Marcel. She went up to it.
The Commander wore his disdainful, impassive air in the picture, which
dated from his return from the Sahara.

Madame Guibert turned round and saw her contemplating her son’s
photograph. She regretted having brought her into the room. But as she
went up to her, Alice looked at her and burst into tears.

“What is the matter?” asked Madame Guibert.

“Oh! Madame, Madame!” cried the young woman, and she sobbed out her
secret to Marcel’s mother. “I loved him! If only you knew how I loved
him!”

In profound pity, Madame Guibert gazed on the woman who had given her
son his distaste for life. She knew from Paule that at the time of
Marcel’s death the photograph of a little girl had been found in the
breast-pocket of his tunic. Of a “little girl” indeed! How true it was
that he had set his affections on a child.

“Poor little one,” she said, stroking Alice’s cheek as she sat drooping
in a chair. In face of this sorrow waiting to be consoled, she forgot
her own misery and immediately recovered her presence of mind and her
courage.

“Alice, my dear, calm yourself,” she repeated. But Madame de Marthenay
still sobbed. She finished with those words which she had uttered
already, the words which summed up her distress: “Why am I not his
widow? I should be less miserable.”

“But you did not wish to be his wife,” Madame Guibert murmured gently.

“Oh yes, I did, for I loved him. It was my people.” She did not accuse
her mother only. But the old lady shook her head and in a lower voice
she said, quite close to her ear, as she continued to stroke her
cheek: “Poor little girl--you did not know how to love.”

Alice attempted to protest.

“No,” repeated Madame Guibert, “you did not know how to love. When
you give your heart it is for ever. And love gives you strength and
patience and endurance. Your mother was seeking your happiness, dear,
but she was seeking it in her own way. She thought she was acting right
when she turned you from my son. Don’t blame her, only blame yourself.
There was no doubt that Madame Dulaurens would have yielded in the long
run, to a real affection, because she loved you and would have seen the
object of your love to be worthy of her approval.” She did not notice
that she had drawn away her hand, and under the influence of the past
she reiterated: “No, you did not want to be Marcel’s wife.”

Alice was quite crushed and could only whisper, “I love him still.”
Distractedly she clung to her fruitless love.

In a firmer voice Madame Guibert went on: “You were afraid of life.
Your parents were afraid for you. Life, Alice, does not mean just
amusement and worldly excitement. To live means to feel one’s soul, all
one’s soul. It means to love, to love with all one’s strength, always,
to the end, and even to the point of sacrifice. You must not fear
either suffering or great joy or great sorrow. They reveal our higher
nature. We must take from the fleeting days the happiness that endures.
The girl who marries comes to share in work and danger, not just to
seek greater ease or more frivolous pleasures. In her very devotion she
will find more delight. You do not know this.”

Alice, encouraged, thought as she listened attentively, “Nobody ever
talked to me like this before.”

“Even now,” went on Madame Guibert, “even in this hour when my heart
is broken, I can only thank God who has heaped His blessing on me. It
surprises you, my dear, that I can talk of my happiness to you to-day.
It is true nevertheless. I am happy. If God asked me to begin my life
all over again, I would do so. And yet, I have seen the dearest faces
cold and still, and I have known the cruellest form of death for a
mother--that which strikes her child far away. But through my husband,
through my sons and daughters, I realised all my heart and what may
come upon us by the divine goodness. My life has been quite full, since
it was mixed with theirs. Now I am no longer alone. My beloved dead
keep me company and the living do not desert me. Look at this telegram
I have had from Étienne. He knows that Paule has left me to-day and he
is comforting me in the name of them all. I had need of it!”

“Madame!” whispered Alice, kissing her hand.

“Yes, my dear, I have loved my life, I have loved life itself. And
I can die, even alone, even if strange hands close my eyes. God has
made my lot a very beautiful one and death will find me obedient and
resigned.” Her clear eyes shone with a holy ecstasy.

Alice, her heart at peace, looked at her respectfully and admiringly.

“Go on talking to me,” she begged as Madame Guibert was silent.

The latter looked at her long and tenderly, then again stroking her
cheek, she said:

“My child, you must promise me something.”

“Oh, Madame, I will promise you anything you like.”

“Try not to think about Marcel. You have no more right to. Accept your
new life, as it is, without any regrets. God expects you to be brave
enough to give up all your old dreams. You were wrong to make your
husband change his career. Work is the true nobility of life. Help him
to find some work, and atone for your mistake.”

“He has deserted me, Madame Guibert.”

“Idleness was perhaps the reason for that. Try to forgive him. Put
your heart into your advice. Let him look after his estate, or interest
himself in the affairs of the town. You will see that all is for the
best. You may still be happy. Your daughter will help you. Is a woman
ever to be pitied who has a child? Prepare this young life to be
virtuous and strong. Love her, not for yourself but for herself. And
God’s peace will rest on you.”

“Oh, if you would only have me here sometimes and talk to me,” said
Alice eagerly, “I think I should take heart once more.” She never
seemed to think that her presence might recall a painful memory to
Madame Guibert. But it was only for a moment that the latter hesitated.

“Come here whenever you want me,” she answered simply.

When Madame de Marthenay had gone, Madame Guibert took Marcel’s
photograph and placed it beside her bed, behind the screen.

“He will be nearer to me,” she thought. “And Alice will not see him
again. She must not see his face if she is to do her duty bravely.”

Then she knelt and prayed:

“My God, Thou who art my strength, help me. I have now given up to Thee
all that I have loved. I have nothing left to offer Thee but my sorrow.
Accept it, and protect all my dear ones--the dead who rest and the
living who are at work....”

When she rose to help Marie lay her modest table, her face glowed with
a serene peace--the peace of those who wait fearlessly for death after
having met life bravely.





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